Black Lives Matter fights categorizing police killings as federal hate crimes

Black Lives Matter fights categorizing police killings as federal hate crimes

“In this case, it’s not the color of their skin, but the color of their uniform.” Those words were spoken by Red Wing (Minn.) City Council Vice President Peggy Rehder last month in support of a resolution to make the ambush killing of a uniformed member of law enforcement a federal hate crime.

Rehder didn’t name names, but she might have been thinking of Harris County (Texas) Deputy Darren Goforth, who was brutally assassinated in late August when a gunman approached him from behind and opened fire, killing the officer on the spot. The incident galvanized the resolve of municipalities across the nation to better protect the men in blue who serve us by upping the ante against those who wantonly kill them.

You wouldn’t imagine that resolutions like the one passed in Red Wing would have any opposition. You’d be wrong. Rod Kackley writes at PJ Media that Rashad Turner, leader of the Black Lives Matter chapter in St. Paul, has a problem with the resolution. “Law enforcement wants to make themselves out to be the victims,” he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune after the Red Wing City Council approved the resolution, which is sponsored by the Fraternal Order of Police.

It’s an interesting argument coming from a man whose words and actions incite violence against police. He led a protest march at the Minnesota State Fair in which demonstrators chanted, “Police are pigs, fry them like bacon.”

Red Wing Police Chief Roger Pohlman, who introduced the resolution, said the BLM protest was typical of what he described as “negative rhetoric toward law enforcement professionals.”

Nekima Levy-Pounds, the present [sic: president] of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, who also serves as a spokeswoman for the Black Lives Matter chapter in that city, defended the behavior of BLM demonstrators and pointed to a study that showed Minnesota is the second-worst place in America for black people to live.

“Anyone who has studied the history of protests understands that protests can be disruptive, protests can be inconvenient, protests will disrupt the status quo and business as usual — that’s the whole point,” she told Minnesota Public Radio.

CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE AT PJ MEDIA.

Ben Bowles

Ben Bowles

Ben Bowles is a freelance writer and regular contributor to "Liberty Unyielding."

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