Red Wing Reconsiders Police Hate Crime Resolution
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- The Red Wing City Council is reconsidering a resolution that would make attacks on police officers a hate crime.
After an outcry on social media, city leaders are promising to take another look, this time with public input.
"It was not meant to be divisive, and frankly, I don't really think it has been," Councilmember Peggy Rehder said.
The council said it was just looking for a way to support its police department. They thought a resolution provided to them by the National Fraternal of Police did just that. But there was one sentence in the resolution that is causing uproar.
"Upon reflection, after looking at it more closely, we realized that we really hadn't done our due diligence," Councilmember Lisa Bayley said. "We needed to go back and examine some of the wording of the resolution."
Red Wing Police's social media pages were full of opinions about the resolution. Negative comments came in by the dozen.
"As the people who took the time to read the resolution really closely realized that it could be interpreted as asking us to change federal hate crimes legislation," Bayley said. "And honestly, that was not our intent, or at least we never talked about."
The council also wants further discussion about the words contained in the resolution that are causing controversy.
"It's purely about that one sentence involving the federal hate crimes legislation," Bayley said. "Everything else we are strongly in support of."
For now, Red Wing will continue to show support for its police, but will let the community decide if a resolution is needed.
"A further resolution [is needed] to our human rights commission, which actively works on these kinds of questions," Bayley said. "Open up a little bit of a community dialogue on the issue and get a recommendation from them."
There will be a human rights commission meeting Thursday night, but WCCO was informed they will not discuss the resolution. They will wait until next month's meeting to take up the issue in order to give residence time to be prepared for public comments.