Krueger writes: "After years of protests against police abuses in Minneapolis, Baltimore, Standing Rock, and beyond, law enforcement has found a way to try and clamp down on any future mass movements by quietly lobbying for bills that seek to criminalize protesting itself."
Police. (photo: Getty Images)
18 April 18
fter years of protests against police abuses in Minneapolis, Baltimore, Standing Rock, and beyond, law enforcement has found a way to try and clamp down on any future mass movements by quietly lobbying for bills that seek to criminalize protesting itself.
According a Monday report from In These Times, police associations, police unions, district attorneys, and cops in leadership positions have been lobbying in favor of �protest suppression� laws in at least eight states:
According to research conducted for In These Times in partnership with Ear to the Ground, law enforcement in at least eight states�Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Washington and Wyoming�lobbied on behalf of anti-protest bills in 2017 and 2018. The bills ran the gamut from punishing face coverings at protests to increasing penalties for �economic disruption� and highway blockage to criminalizing civil protests that interfere with �critical infrastructure� like oil pipelines.
Emboldened by the Trump administration, at least 31 states have considered 62 pieces of anti-protest legislation since November 2016, with at least seven enacted and 31 still pending. The full scope of police support for these bills is not yet known.
And they�re doing this lobbying largely out of the public eye. In one example, Bob Kroll, the president of the Minneapolis police union, told In These Times the union is having �ongoing meetings� with lawmakers, including the author of a failed bill to make blocking a highway punishable by a year in jail and a $3,000 fine. Asked about that union�s support, the ACLU�s legislative director in the state was taken aback, saying it was �the first I�ve heard� about police backing any iteration of the bill. (An interesting aside at the end of the story: Kroll, who harshly criticized Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis, admitted back in 2016 that he�s a member of a motorcycle group denounced by the Anti-Defamation League for tolerating white supremacy.)
While a review by the site found the results of these efforts have so far been mixed�of the anti-protest laws tracked across eight states, one was signed into law, two were vetoed, another four are pending while the rest were voted down or killed�it�s a troubling development in a broader clampdown on free speech and the ability to organize in public spaces. Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to aggressively prosecute nearly 200 activists arrested while protesting the inauguration.
