GREEN BAY, WI -- Black Lives Matter protests are erupting around the country, this weekend.
Last night in St. Paul, Minnesota, more than 100 people were arrested.
The clashes are coming after a week of violence, and Thursday night's tragic shooting, where five police officers were killed by a sniper in Dallas.
Now a Northeast Wisconsin State Representative plans to unveil a bill Monday that would make targeting police officers a hate crime. The bill would be modeled after a similar law passed earlier this year in Louisiana, which covers police officers, firefighters, and EMS personnel.
Its author, Rep. David Steffen [R - Howard], says he's been working on it for several weeks. But in light of the tragedy in Dallas, Steffen says he wanted to start gaining public support for the bill months ahead of next legislative session.
He says it's a direct response to Dallas police's call to show blue support across the country.
But some say the call for unity, and support, needs to be happening more at the community level.
Inside Divine Temple Church of God in Christ, in Green Bay, Pastor L.C. Green is taking this Sunday to call for some extra peace, and love "especially today," says Green, "we want to pray for unity. We wanted to pray for peace, because so much is going on."
Pastor Green says he's spent this week building up his congregation's hope in the wake of last week's shootings in three different states.
"We are going to have problems," says Green. "This is life."
He's also been helping teach some of the largely African-American congregation's youth how to best handle a police encounter.
"If an officer tells you to get on the ground, get on the ground," says Pastor Green, adding that it's a stark sign of the times that such a class needs to be taught.
It's a frustrating reality, which is why he's calling for a bigger community effort--among churches, neighbors, and police--to know one another.
"This can happen anywhere," adds Green, referring to the shootings across the country.
It's a similar call for unity that Rep. Steffen says inspired his draft bill.
"It felt like the appropriate thing to do to bring this forward," says Rep. Steffen, "to begin to bring public awareness, and support, as we as a state show our support for Wisconsin law enforcement."
Rep. Steffen says he was approached by two police officers earlier this year, asking for the bill.
"With hate crimes-whether it's against a race, an ethnicity, sexual orientation-there are escalators in the law that apple to those types of crimes," explains Steffen. "Those [would] now exist for the first time in the State of Wisconsin for law enforcement."
But Pastor Green doesn't want people to focus on what constitutes harsher punishment, as much as he'd like to see more proactive efforts to bring a divided community closer together.
"I think any crime against a person is a hate crime," adds Green.
Current Wisconsin law defines a hate crime as a crime based in whole or in part on a person's race, religion, color, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, or ancestry.
