McHenry Times

Republican state Sen. Craig Wilcox is all in on legislation that seeks to impose stiffer penalties against those who attack law enforcement by declaring the offense a hate crime.

With the number of attacks on police officers on the rise across much of the country, the so-called Police Protection Act focuses on “officer targeting,” branding any act where an individual attacks or stalks an officer as a Class 4 felony hate crime, Washington News Post reported.

“It's a shame we have to do this, but we absolutely should,” Wilcox told the McHenry Times. “While the reality is we shouldn’t need enhancers for people to think twice about these kinds of attacks and they should be punishable enough by the time behind bars ... if we need to do something like this to aide our officers, I’m okay with it. The biggest problem is Illinois has been downgrading punishment for serious crimes and the reality is we are creating criminal enterprises that know the law and are taking full advantage of that.”

Wilcox was also skeptical of claims by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) charging that studies show enhancing a penalty for a crime doesn't reduce the rate of that crime.

“There are just so many variables, you can't say with any certainty what any of what they’re looking at means,” he added. “I can definitely see how making such claims on this kind of data would be suspect, like maybe they had a preconceived idea in mind and are manipulating the data they have to reflect that. We need independent studies of all the variables that lead to the crime, and to study how our legislation reflects that.”

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, Illinois News Today reported, it as proof the legislation is needed. 

Wilcox argues that Republicans have long been doing all they can to push policy that stands to keep officers safer.

“Our caucus has filed many bills we thought would show we support officers while also holding them accountable,” he said. “We need to give our officers the leeway they need to do the job. If we can’t say we’re trusting enough of officers to give them that leeway, none of this really matters because so many of them will soon no longer will be in the profession, and if you think things are bad now, just wait and see.”