Governor would let armed citizens decide whom to shoot during protests | Opinion
It should be clear to everyone that our nation is badly in need of healing. After a bruising election season and in the midst of a roiling pandemic, community leaders should be taking the temperature down, not cranking up the dial. Unfortunately, Gov. DeSantis has chosen the latter route by announcing proposed legislation recently that would allow citizens to shoot “suspected looters” or those involved with “criminal mischief.”
Our faith teaches us to seek justice and equality, and to pursue the common good. DeSantis’ proposal would do the exact opposite — fomenting violence, impairing public safety, and violating our American principles of free speech and assembly.
As members of the clergy, we oppose DeSantis’ proposal and hope that it never sees the light of day in the Florida Legislature during the upcoming session.
Most alarming, DeSantis’ new rules around protests would create a broad mandate for citizens to take the law into their own hands. It would make it legal for drivers to run over peaceful protesters and for citizens to kill other citizens involved in vaguely defined ‘criminal mischief.’ If passed, this proposal would grant a license to vigilantism, where somebody could easily murder individuals for acts as minor as vandalism or small altercations.
DeSantis says these new rules on protests are about making Florida safer, but that is not true. Rather, they would exempt the aggressors from facing civil or criminal charges. Such rules are abhorrent and undemocratic. They create precisely the kind of lawlessness that the proposal pretends to prevent.
DeSantis’ proposed bill seeks to intimidate any who embark on peaceful protest—whether for left-wing, right-wing or nonpartisan causes — by making them responsible for the actions of fringe actors. Also, it creates a nebulous definition of a mob and uses the unnecessarily heavy hand of racketeering laws to pursue protest organizers with the same tools used to disperse organized crime.
Of course, the net effect of all of this is to chill free speech in our state. It would put entire communities at risk, fearful that they might be arrested for supporting a cause they believe in or even be murdered by another civilian who disagrees with them.
It is shameful that DeSantis would seek to divide our community and put innocent folks in harm’s way when leaders should be looking to create calm and soothe tensions. The reality is that we already have tools and laws on the books to punish those who disrupt the peace or create violence and unrest; not only are these proposed laws legally redundant, they are counter-productive to their stated purpose.
DeSantis’ proposal is a problem in search of a solution that does not exist in our state — none of the widespread looting seen in Portland, Seattle, or a few other cities has occurred in Florida. It ignores the actual needs of law enforcement. In September, the Florida Police Chiefs Association released a report on its recommendations and priorities for better policing and accountability — none of them are actually addressed in DeSantis’ proposal.
In short, the governor’s proposed bill would only incite violence and endanger lives — all to fix a problem that’s nonexistent in Florida. We hope Florida’s lawmakers see through this attempt to inflame tensions and divide at a time when our leaders should be doing their best to bring us together.
Pastor Norman Hodge Jr. is an elder at the Church of Christ Written in Heaven in Goulds, and a member of Faith in Public Life, a national movement of 50,000 clergy and faith leaders pursuing justice, equality and the common good.
This story was originally published December 15, 2020 at 4:57 PM.