Around New England

Somerville Police Undergo Eight-Hour Training In Implicit Bias, Cultural Competency, and Hate Crimes Concerning Homosexual and Transgender People

December 15, 2023

Somerville police have gone through training on how to deal with homosexual and transgender people for the past three years, a police official said.

“In 2021, we had training on unconscious or implicit bias. In 2022, we had training on cultural competency. In 2023, we focused on hate crimes. And specifically, they all had a section with the LGBTQ-plus community. We also have a policy written – extensive policy – with regards to this and with definitions and how to handle situations involving members of the LGBT-plus community, as well,” said Christopher Ward, the deputy chief of the Somerville Police Department, during a meeting Monday, December 11 of the Somerville City Council’s Equity, Gender, Seniors, Families, and Vulnerable Populations Committee.

(The discussion began at 2:22:24 of the meeting video.)

Ward said Somerville police officers have undergone eight-hour training on these topics over and above the training required of all police officers in the state.

The subcommittee chairman, city councilor Beatriz Gomez Mouakad, asked Ward if the police department has reached out to the city’s Department of Racial and Social Justice and the new “LGBTQ-plus counselor” of the city’s Department of Health and Human Services.

“I was actually going to reach out to them and ask them to review our policy to make sure our pronunciation, our language is proper, just so they can do a quick review on it and repair any items that needed to be repaired,” Ward replied.

Mouakad asked if police make sure that with cases of “sexual harassment” that police “don’t victimize the victim” and that in cases of violence against homosexuals and transgender people “that they’re not blamed” and that “there’s a level of sensitivity to the subject matter.”

“Well, that would be a given, that we we’d treat them like that,” Ward said.

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