Last week, Huntsville STAC Agent Bill Clardy III was shot and killed in the line of the duty, making Clardy the sixth such death in 2019 for Alabama and reflects an alarming trend for the state.

Earlier this year, State Sen. Chris Elliott (R-Daphne) pushed for legislation that would include law enforcement employment as a protected class, just as race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or physical or mental disability are.

However, the bill got bogged down in the Senate Judiciary Committee and never made it to the floor of the Alabama Senate for a vote. On Tuesday, Elliott told WVNN’s “The Jeff Poor Show” that he will take another shot at the legislation in 2020.

“It got bogged down in committee,” Elliott explained. “It got some amendments on it in committee that really made it untenable to get to the floor. And I think we’re going to give that a try again, and I anticipate it getting to the floor without any other amendments. You’ll recall those amendments were making other things a hate crime as well. I think what we need to do is take this one step at a time and address the issue at hand as opposed to try to bog it down with amendments.”

“I mean, all law enforcement officers deserve better than a bill that is festooned with other amendments,” he added.

Elliott said his renewed effort on the legislation would be done out of respect to those slain officers.

“Any time you start loading up a bill with amendments like that, it becomes a problem,” Elliott said. “But whether you’re talking about Officer Clardy or Justin Bila here in Mobile, or a couple of years ago Baldwin County Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Ward or others — you know, those guys deserve a clean bill and something we absolutely have a priority on.”

@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University, the editor of Breitbart TV and host of “The Jeff Poor Show” from 2-5 p.m. on WVNN in Huntsville.