A Cambria County lawmaker hopes a bill he’s proposing will help keep police officers in Pennsylvania safe.

Representative Frank Burns plans to push for a quick vote of his Blue Lives Matters Bill when the legislature reconvenes on Monday.

The move comes in the face of intensified attacks on police officers nationwide.

Burns’ H.B. 2261 would make attacks on police officers a hate crime in Pennsylvania. It would make employment as a law enforcement officer a covered class under Pennsylvania’s hate crimes law, on par with race, color, religion and national origin. It would stiffen by one degree the penalty for assaulting a police, corrections, probation or parole officer.

Burns said Tuesday’s incident in Phoenix, where a driver purposely barreled his vehicle into three police officers, seriously injuring two of them, is the latest in a growing line of incidents where law enforcement is being targeted for harm.

“More than ever, we need to send a clear message that this type of behavior will be dealt with harshly in Pennsylvania,” Burns said. “I intend to lobby my fellow representatives and write a letter to the House Judiciary Committee chairman, with the goal of swiftly moving my bill through the process.”

The legislation, first introduced in July, has attracted 22 co-sponsors and is backed by the 40,000-member Pennsylvania Fraternal Order of Police.

“With the bipartisan support for this bill, it needs to move through the process and not languish in committee,” Burns said. “The sooner we do this, the better. That’s the message I’m taking to my peers in both parties.”