A bill in the Kentucky Senate would make it a crime to insult or insult a police officer during a riot. Supporters say the bill targets people who “cross the line” illegally, but opponents see it as a blatant attempt to crush the protests and a violation of First Amendment rights.
Senate Bill 211 requires up to three months in prison for a person who “approaches, insults, provokes or challenges a police officer with offensive or mocking words” or makes “gestures or other physical contact that would have a direct tendency to provoke a response violent from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person. “
A person convicted of this misdemeanor charge may also face a $ 250 fine and be disqualified from public assistance benefits for three months.
The bill also contains a clause that rejects the “defuse the police” movement, stating that government entities that fund law enforcement agencies must “maintain and improve their respective financial support”.
The bill was approved by the Senate Committee on Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection on Thursday, in a 7-3 vote, with only the support of Republicans. Now he goes to the full Senate and can be approved there next week, and then he needs to be approved in the House. Republicans control the two chambers of the Kentucky legislature.
CBS News requested comments from state senator David Carroll, a retired Republican police officer who is the main sponsor of the project. After this story was published, he wrote in an e-mail: “After looking at your headline, I think I have nothing to say to you. I miss the time when we really had impartial journalists !!” [SIC]
CBS News also contacted the staff of Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat.
Carroll told the Louisville Courier-Journal that the project is a response to the disturbances that broke out in many cities across the country last summer. Louisville was an epicenter for racial justice protests due to the Breonna Taylor’s death, a black woman killed in March 2020 during a Louisville police raid on her home.
“This country was built on the basis of legal protests and it is something that we must maintain – the right of our citizens to do so,” Carroll told the Courier-Journal. “It is about who crosses the line and commits criminal acts”.
Kentucky’s ACLU called the legislation “an extreme project to quell dissent” and said it would criminalize freedom of expression.