Looks like the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate is following the Trump playbook to denounce all things it doesn’t like, since it has passed a bill to allow authorities to seize the assets of protesters.
That’s right. If a protest turns violent, whether people were engaged in the violence or not, just being at the protest would be enough for law-enforcement officials to seize their property.
According to the Arizona Capital Times, the bill, which passed Wednesday, “expands the state’s racketeering laws, now aimed at organized crime, to also include rioting,” and redefines “what constitutes rioting to include actions that result in damage to the property of others.”
So anyone attending a peaceful protest that happens to turn violent would run the risk of losing his or her assets. The new bill would also allow police to arrest those who planned the protest even if they had nothing to do with any violence.
State Sen. John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills), who supported the bill, believes that the bill stops those active in “professional protest” whose only plan is to start chaos.
“You now have a situation where you have full-time, almost professional agent-provocateurs that attempt to create public disorder,” Kavanagh, a former police officer, told the Capitol Times. “Wouldn’t you rather stop a riot before it starts? Do you really want to wait until people are injuring each other, throwing Molotov cocktails, picking up barricades and smashing them through businesses in downtown Phoenix?”
Read more at the Arizona Capital Times.