{"id":55753,"date":"2015-10-20T06:00:06","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=55753"},"modified":"2015-10-19T11:22:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-19T16:22:46","slug":"piling-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=55753","title":{"rendered":"Piling On"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The City of Cambridge is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fox9.com\/news\/35789267-story\">proposing<\/a> making\u00a0harming a cop a &#8220;hate crime&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a hot-button issue right now, both nationally in the wake of a series of politically charged police-killings (against a backdrop of a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/sep\/04\/police-deaths-2015-law-enforcement-safety\">generally very safe year for police<\/a>) and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/deputy-fatally-shot-in-st-cloud-hospital-shooter-also-dead\/333881611\/\">killing of a rural Minnesota sheriff&#8217;s deputy<\/a> over this past weekend.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a dumb idea, and not\u00a0just because &#8220;hate crime&#8221; legislation is misguided.<\/p>\n<p>Police have a dangerous job; not\u00a0<em>the most\u00a0<\/em>dangerous job, but why split hairs?<\/p>\n<p>But right now,\u00a0any\u00a0sort of attack against a police officer &#8211; from lethal force to harsh words &#8211; is already accompanied by harsh upcharges and sentence enhancements. \u00a0If the thought of &#8220;life without parole&#8221; doesn&#8217;t deter a potential cop-killer, why would &#8220;life without parole\u00a0<em>and\u00a0<\/em>a hate crime conviction?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The City of Cambridge is proposing making\u00a0harming a cop a &#8220;hate crime&#8221;. It&#8217;s a hot-button issue right now, both nationally in the wake of a series of politically charged police-killings (against a backdrop of a generally very safe year for police) and the killing of a rural Minnesota sheriff&#8217;s deputy over this past weekend. It&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55754,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55753\/revisions\/55754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}