{"id":56599,"date":"2023-02-20T15:11:59","date_gmt":"2023-02-20T23:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=56599"},"modified":"2023-02-20T15:11:59","modified_gmt":"2023-02-20T23:11:59","slug":"no-tolerance-for-intolerance-law-enforcement-vets-explore-strategies-to-combat-hate-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=56599","title":{"rendered":"No Tolerance for Intolerance: Law Enforcement Vets Explore Strategies to Combat Hate Crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Mark Hedin<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The ACT Against Hate Alliance brought together some heavy hitters from law enforcement to discuss strategies for combatting the recent rise in hate crimes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As the United States experiences an escalating wave of hate crimes, particularly victimizing Asian Americans, ACT Against Hate Alliance brought together some heavy hitters from law enforcement to discuss strategies for combatting this alarming trend.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe core mission of the\u00a0ACT Against Hate Alliance<\/a>\u00a0is to identify the root causes behind hate crimes, and propose solutions to stop them,\u201d co-host Bob Huff, former California \u00a0state senate minority leader, said in introducing the Feb. 8 panel, the sixth in a monthly series the organization is hosting while also opening chapters on campuses throughout the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all stakeholders,\u201d said Domingo Herraiz, of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. \u201cWhen an incident or hate crime occurs, it truly rocks the community and the credibility of government and policing agencies. The sense of safety for all in the community is badly damaged.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the investigation falls apart, if there\u2019s no prosecution, no charges, we have long-term, long-lasting effects and devastation to the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to speak up, because we are the majority and we cannot tolerate this. We weren\u2019t raised this way. Very, very few people were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inflammatory political, online rhetoric<\/h2>\n

Jim McDonnell<\/a>, whose decades in law enforcement included stints as Long Beach police chief after almost 30 years with LAPD, and as LA County sheriff from 2014-18, overseeing 18,000 employees and a $3.3 billion budget, attributed some of the near-doubling of hate crime reports in the past decade to inflammatory leaders and unchecked social media that \u201cencourages people who can hide in the dark\u201d to anonymously spew hate encouraging and rewarding like-minded others for \u201csomething very hurtful to our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat lack of accountability, I think, separates where we are today from where we were 20 years ago, as it relates to hate crimes in particular, but other crimes and aberrant behavior as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He cited improvements in data collection thanks to a new \u201cNIBR\u201d (National Incident Based Reporting) system that will improve coordination between various law enforcement agencies and jurisdictions. Besides leading to a more complete picture of what is widely believed to be an underreported crime phenomenon, he said, NIBR is expected to make it easier to identify trends and capture specifics about individual crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a relatively small number of people in our society who would engage in this type of behavior,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, it\u2019s important that those in law enforcement be aware of who those individuals are, what groups they\u2019re affiliated with, and how they operate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe dedicate a ton of resources to hate crimes,\u201d said\u00a0FBI Special Agent Brian Gilhooly<\/a>, who oversees criminal investigations across seven southern California counties, dealing with gangs, narcotics, violent crime, hate\u00a0crime, public corruption, crimes against children and fraud.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not only an attack on a victim. It has a huge impact on the entire community, which is why it\u2019s a priority for the FBI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reporting hate crimes<\/h2>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll take a team to really make an impact on this threat,\u201d the former Navy SEAL officer in the Middle East and Pacific regions said, \u201cand here in Los Angeles, we are one of the only field offices that has an entire squad dedicated to investigating hate crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is \u201cis a button for tips and leads\u201d\u00a0on the FBI website<\/a>, Gilhooly said. \u201cWe can use that information to better prepare our law enforcement or intelligence analysts, our victim specialists or our language specialists to address these important issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people set the bar relatively high for reaching out to law enforcement,\u201d Gilhooly added, \u201cthinking that they might need to actually have some physical violence.\u201d But, to enable better understanding of community dynamics and to target investigations on the worst offenders, he said, \u201cHarassment and other forms should also be reported to law enforcement.\u201d<\/p>\n

And perhaps \u201cnot commonly known,\u201d he said, are other resources available, primarily to victims, that include community outreach specialists \u201cwho speak all manners of foreign languages.<\/p>\n

For cultural understanding, he said, \u201cbeing able to communicate in someone\u2019s first language makes it a little bit easier to talk about some difficult problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

More accountability for perpetrators of hate crimes<\/h2>\n

Walt Allen, Covina mayor pro-tem and a 46-year law enforcement veteran, who helps oversee police training for police recruits throughout southern California, also described a need to do more to hold people accountable for their actions, something he felt has diminished in recent years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people are not held accountable, you\u2019re going to have continuous behavior. We need to set an example for those people who do wrong and hold them to the letter of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

He described a new emphasis in police training on investigating hate crimes and dealing empathetically with its victims, and said he has high hopes for the recently enacted\u00a0CARE act, state Senate Bill 1338<\/a>, that begins to address the needs of people diagnosed as severely mentally ill.<\/p>\n

\u201cSevere mental health issues are a driving force behind violent crime in California,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you tolerate it, you encourage it,\u201d said Denton Carlson, police chief in the northern California city of San Ramon, whose department was able to rapidly respond to and defuse some incidents over the holidays late last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t take actions to stop it, it\u2019s just going to keep occurring and flourish.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou often hear people say that \u2018hey, somebody should do something about that,\u201d Herraiz said. \u201cWell, we\u2019re all somebody who can step up and play a role in our own way in affecting what happens in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ByMark Hedin Feb 15, 2023 The...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ca-local","category-opinion","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56600,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56599\/revisions\/56600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}