An Unwise Protection

Reason magazine is correct here: this is a bad idea.

Last week the House of Representatives, by a margin of more than 10 to 1, approved a completely gratuitous, blatantly unconstitutional bill that would make assaulting a police officer a federal crime.... The Protect and Serve Act prescribes a prison sentence of up to 10 years for anyone who "knowingly assaults a law enforcement officer," thereby "causing serious bodily injury," or "attempts to do so." Such conduct is, of course, already illegal in all 50 states, and there is no reason to think local law enforcement agencies are reluctant to arrest and prosecute people guilty of it.

Nor does the problem addressed by the bill seem to be on the rise, notwithstanding all the overheated talk of a "war on cops." The number of law enforcement officers who are feloniously killed each year is small and volatile, but according to the FBI it dropped by 30 percent last year, and the average for the last 15 years (51) is lower than the average for the previous 15 (65).

In any event, the Constitution does not give Congress the authority to fight local crime.... The Protect and Serve Act explicitly allows federal prosecution of someone who is acquitted in state court, or who is convicted but receives a penalty the Justice Department deems too light....

These issues should be familiar to anyone who has followed the debate over federal prosecution of hate crimes, which occur when the victim is picked "because of" his "actual or perceived" membership in a protected group. The Senate version of the Protect and Serve Act takes that analogy and runs with it, targeting assaults and attempted assaults committed "because of the actual or perceived status of the [victim] as a law enforcement officer."

Under that bill, someone who takes a swing at a guy he mistakenly thinks is a cop has committed a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison—even if he misses.

Resisting an unlawful arrest is protected behavior, but this would seem to create a loophole that would allow them to send you down for a decade anyway. After all, you need only show that they "attempted" to cause "serious" harm, not that they actually caused any harm. Ten years for that?