Prairie State Wire

Oak Park Village Trustee (R) Jim Dodge favors substance over style in the push to make police officers feel safer on the job.

With the number of attacks on police officers on the rise across the country, several GOP lawmakers are now supporting the so-called Police Protection Act that focuses on “officer targeting.”

“I could see the appeal of calling it a hate crime, but what I would rather see is aggressively enforcing existing law when someone attacks an officer doing duty,” Dodge said of a proposal now floating around Springfield that would make an attack on a police officer a Class 3 felony hate crime. “I think now there's way too much bargaining, plea bargaining, when it comes to enforcing the law. If there's a problem with the way any member of law enforcement does their job there's a system in place to deal with that. I'm afraid to make something like that a hate crime because it may make it more difficult to get justice because it changes what is required to get a conviction.”

Oak Park Village Trustee Jim Dodge | Facebook

With recent FBI data pointing to upwards of 60,000 law enforcement officers being injured in the line of duty across the country in 2021, the Washington News Post adds that the bill brands any offense where an individual attacks or stalks an officer as a hate crime.

Dodge doesn’t find much credence in American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) arguments that insist data shows enhancing a penalty for a crime doesn't reduce the rate of that crime.

“It sounds to me like they're under-thinking the reason a crime happens in the first place,” he said. “You can have severe penalties on the books but if you never give those kinds of penalties out or are always plea bargaining down it's hard for that to serve as a deterrent. Tough laws should also mean tough prosecutions. I don't think that’s not happening right now.”

In sponsoring the bill, state Rep. Marty Moylan (D-Des Plaines) points to a July 2020 episode in Grant Park, where upwards of 1,000 people rushed the Christopher Columbus statue in an attempt to overthrow it as proof the legislation is needed.

Dodge thinks more can and needs to be done.

“I think the main thing that can be done is you can’t just allow hardened criminals to plea bargain crimes down,” he said. “The system can be fairer and the system can be better, but we have to enforce the laws we have.”