Ketchikan City Hall is pictured on a sunny Southeast Alaska day. (Maria Dudzak/KRBD)
Ketchikan’s City Council will take up a resolution Thursday that would ask state lawmakers to protect law enforcement officers from discrimination under state law.
The resolution submitted by Mayor Bob Sivertsen is nearly identical to one the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly passed last week.
Proponents told the assembly that police officers are facing increased discrimination after racial justice protests erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police this summer.
Critics said they saw the measure as a “direct backlash” to an earlier assembly resolution asking lawmakers to protect sexual and gender minorities from discrimination. The city of Ketchikan recently passed an ordinance banning discrimination against LGBTQ people within city limits, but no such protection exists on a statewide level.
The Ketchikan City Council meets at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Ted Ferry Civic Center. The full agenda is available online, and the meeting is broadcast at the city’s website and on local cable channels. The public can weigh in at the start of the meeting.
