Editor’s note: Paul Goldenberg is a featured contributor to “24 on 2024: A police leadership playbook.” Download your copy here.
As the lead detective in charge of investigating gang violence and organized crime in central New Jersey in the 1990s, I was baffled and annoyed to be asked to leave that position for a promotion to chief of a statewide investigative task force dedicated to bias crime investigations, community relations and domestic terrorism! Bias crimes and community affairs were the equivalent of being assigned the obit beat at a newspaper — the lowest rung.
That aversion soon passed. Not long after, I got a call from one of my detectives in the middle of a chilly April night. Hundreds of tombstones had been toppled in a large Jewish cemetery, and many had been defaced with swastikas and other antisemitic symbols and messages. No doubt a despicable crime, albeit no more than criminal mischief, but why was he calling me at that hour?
Although unscathed, it turns out that one of the tombstones just a few feet from that very crime scene bore my father’s name. In an instant, my attitude regarding hate-motivated crimes transformed forevermore.
The worldwide spread of hate
Rather than posters, books and rallies, today’s main methods of broadcasting distortion, disinformation and extremist propaganda occur via social media platforms. Maybe 10,000 people per day would see an offensive poster applied to a wall in a large city. These days, hundreds of millions around the world encounter hate-inspired memes and read untethered rants leaving some to radicalize rapidly.
Yesterday’s tactics of vandalism and desecration against faith-based targets have given way to military-style attacks in the name of extremist ideologies. Mass murderers enter mosques, synagogues and churches having spread their noxious messages on social media, and sometimes even livestream their murderous actions.
An inadequate understanding of hate crimes
Although there has been no shortage of headlines relating to targeted violence against religious communities in the United States, incidents remain underreported in many states. State and local jurisdictions also fail to document and prosecute hate crimes due to inadequate training and understanding of the impact of these incidents on communities.
Some states have hate crime laws, often with categories covering groups such as nationality and the homeless, but only 14 states require law enforcement training for hate crimes, and it may be as little as 30 minutes of instruction.
States without hate crime legislation, such as Arkansas, Georgia and South Carolina, can prosecute under various federal laws, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1968, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. But many states still fail to incorporate hate crimes and community relations training into their curricula and academies and of those who do, some apply programs modeled decades ago that haven’t advanced.
Today’s approach should consider executive leadership and professional development focused on building communities of trust, community conflict resolution, and more critical than ever, providing support and training for officers assigned to community relations tasks, many of whom were once viewed as the outlier, yet, this is potentially a career-saving and coveted position that should be elevated within the policing ecosystem and considered as chief’s principal counselor!
What training should cover
In-service and academy training needs to consider the role of social media in sharing violent extremist ideologies, propagating hate, radicalizing individuals to extremist-based violence and developing experts versed in assessing and interpreting potential threats; understanding the language of memes; identifying extremist platforms and threads that are seeking to spark attacks to preempt occurrences.
Supporting the victims of hate crimes
To adequately counter targeted violence against religious and vulnerable communities, we need to consider the following: How do we support the community, particularly individual victims? The following are key considerations:
- Has the responding first-line officer been trained to understand how to report or investigate a hate crime?
- Have we updated/addressed our training to be adept in recognizing and identifying bias indicators when responding to a hate crime?
- Do our officers demonstrate enhanced skills in engaging with victims sensitively and respectfully?
- Do they possess the ability to determine what facts are necessary to substantiate the criminal charge and the motivation?
- Do officers recognize how DAs and law enforcement can work together effectively to obtain convictions, and how to accurately report data?
The beginning of 2024 sadly finds us in an environment of growing distrust, polarization, hatred and antisemitic rhetoric. Our very own police and deputies are victims of hate-motivated targeted violent attacks nearly every day. As such, our law enforcement leaders need to think globally and act locally. Clashes and disputes thousands of miles away from us are having very real effects on our communities as they are rending the fabric of our nation. I remain hopeful that in 2024 we as a nation may come to better understand how important our policing ecosystem is and its direct correlation to sustaining the fabric of our democracy.
