Editorial: There is no reason to add police to California’s hate crime law

Reacting to a spike in deadly shootings of police officers around the nation, a so-called Blue Lives Matter movement has been agitating for attacks on police to be treated under the law as hate crimes, subject to the same enhanced penalties that can be meted out for attacks motivated by racial or religious prejudice. Now a Republican assemblyman wants California to climb aboard that bandwagon.

But one can be appalled by attacks on police and still recognize that this is a bad idea.

Under California’s current hate crime laws, an additional sentence of one to three years can be imposed on a defendant for a crime committed because of the “actual or perceived characteristics of the victim”: disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. The bill proposed by Republican Assemblyman Jay Obernolte of Big Bear would expand that list to include “peace officer,” a category that includes not just police officers but sheriffs, marshals and port police.

California law already places police in a special category for some purposes. Battery against police and other peace officers while they are on duty is punished more harshly than battery against civilians. California’s second-degree murder statute provides longer sentences for the killing of a peace officer engaged in the performance of his or her duties (25 instead of 15 years to life, and, in some circumstances, life without the possibility of parole).

Obernolte said enactment of his bill would “send a message to criminals targeting law enforcement officers that their reprehensible behavior will not be tolerated” and would serve as a deterrent.

But why would it create any more of a deterrent for a criminal tempted to ambush and kill a police officer on patrol than the present severe penalties?

This campaign is likely to win adherents not only because attacks on police are reprehensible, but because treating them as hate crimes sounds like a way to combat them. But in fact it’s based on a misunderstanding of what hate crime statutes are designed to do. Of course every violent attack on a human being is hateful, but as originally conceived, a hate crime is also rooted in a pervasive and especially pernicious prejudice that infects society at large — such as racism, anti-Semitism or homophobia — that poisons communities outside the context of a particular act of violence.

In recent years, states have repeatedly expanded their hate crime laws to include those that target not only the disabled, but also the elderly and the homeless. In 2009, the GOP tried — unsuccessfully — to have attacks on veterans classified as hate crimes. These overbroad definitions create the impression that an act of violence isn’t being treated seriously unless it is designated a hate crime.

We understand the impulse to use the legislative power to “send a message” of support to police who feel besieged by a recent upsurge in deadly attacks on their comrades. But existing penalties for cop-killers already send that message loud and clear, while enacting this bill would muddle the meaning of a hate crime. Let this bandwagon pass by.