To become a police officer in the U.S., one almost always has to
enroll in an academy for some basic training. The typical academy
session lasts 25 weeks, but state governments — which oversee police
academies for local and state law enforcement officers — have wide
latitude when it comes to choosing the subjects that will be taught in
the classrooms.
How to properly identify and investigate hate crimes does not seem
terribly high on the list of priorities, according to a ProPublica
review.
Only 12 states, for example, have statutes requiring that academies provide instruction on hate crimes.
In at least seven others — Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Nevada, Missouri,
South Dakota and Texas — recruits aren’t required to learn about hate
crimes at all, according to law enforcement officials.
Even states that provide new recruits with at least some education on
hate crimes often provide training that is cursory at best.
Officials overseeing police training in three states — Wisconsin,
North Carolina and Washington — told ProPublica that their recruits
spent about 30 minutes of class time on the subject.
Hate crimes in America have made no shortage of headlines over the
last year as the country has once more confronted its raw and often
violent racial, religious and political divisions. Just how few hate
crimes get formally reported and analyzed has shocked many. Fewer still
get successfully prosecuted, a fact that has provoked frustration among
some elected officials and law enforcement agencies.
But the widespread lack of training for frontline officers in how to
handle potential hate crimes, if no great surprise, might actually be
the criminal justice system’s most basic failing. There is, after all,
little way to either accurately tabulate or aggressively prosecute hate
crimes if the officers in the street don’t know how to identify and
investigate them.
Click here for the full article.
Source: ProPublica
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