Police, shop assistants and grocers have been receiving such threats or assaults. FMTNews Covid19
NEW YORK: Accused criminals across the United States have started using the threat of deadly Covid-19 infection as a weapon in attacks on police, shop assistants and grocers trying to keep the nation fed during lockdown.
In St Petersburg, Florida, a man coughed and spit on police and threatened to spread the virus as they responded to domestic violence calls to his home. He faces up to five years in prison on federal charges of perpetrating a biological weapons hoax after his test results came back negative. New Jersey is among the first states to consider making it a crime to issue a “credible threat to infect another with Covid-19 or similar infectious disease that triggered public emergency,” said a spokesman for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Several studies have found HIV criminalisation laws targeted minorities, said Brad Sears, associate dean of Public Interest Law at UCLA Law School. Those laws were created in response to a negative stereotype of “a predatory gay or bisexual man,” he said. “That could increase the risk that state legislatures pass criminal laws to kind of scapegoat the very people who need to be protected,” Sears said.
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