In 2015, in an outburst of pure insanity, the National Fraternal Order of Police, a union representing over 300,000 officers, called for cops to be included under Congress’s hate crimes statute. This demand has since materialized into multiple acts of “Blue Lives Matter” laws, and TFTP has reported on their use multiple times. Never, however, have we seen hate crime legislation used to prosecute the free speech of an innocent person — until now.
A 19-year-old woman in Utah has been charged with a hate crime after she allegedly stomped on a “back the blue” sign at a gas station. There was no victim and no one had been harmed, yet a Garfield County police officer claimed the young woman’s actions made him fear for his life and therefore pushed to have her charged with a hate crime.
According to the arrest affidavit, as reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, the Garfield County police officer was conducting a traffic stop for speeding at a gas station when the officer saw a woman “stomping on a ‘Back the Blue’ sign next to where the traffic stop was conducted, crumble it up in a destructive manner and throw it into a trash can all while smirking in an intimidating manner towards me.”
The “smirking” caused the cop to fear for his safety and he moved to detain and subsequently arrest the woman for her completely legal act.
Hellbound and Down 