 Welcome to today's interactive web chat in honor of LGBTI Pride Month, a month celebrating the contributions of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex community in the United States and around the world. The theme of this discussion is Perspectives and Voices in Addressing Hate Crimes, a discussion which will highlight best practices and strategies from law enforcement agencies and civil society groups on how to respond to and prevent hate crimes. I'm Corey Andrews, the spokesperson for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the U.S. Department of State. This is an important time to have a conversation on the human rights of LGBTI persons. While there have been a lot of progress in recent years, enormous challenges persist, particularly related to hate crime prevention and anti-discrimination. One way to address these problems is to enable dialogue such as this, and to encourage open discussion about these topics. Here to answer your questions are Beverly Tillery, the executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project, an organization that empowers LGBTQ and HIV-affected communities and allies to end all forms of violence. We are also joined by Lieutenant Brett Parson, the supervisor of the Special Liaison Branch at the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. We are also joined by viewing groups around the world, including those at U.S. embassies in Ottawa, Canada and Santiago, Chile. We will introduce each group in a moment. Before we get started, I just want to mention that if you have questions for our panelists, please ask them in the chat space next to the video player or on Twitter using the hashtag LGBTI rights. We'll try to answer as many of your questions as possible, and we will also provide links to resources in the chat space. Beverly, welcome, and thank you for joining us. Can you briefly explain your role at the New York City Anti-Violence Project? Of course. Thank you for having me. I am the executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project. AVP, as we call our organization, works to address and end all forms of violence that impact the LGBTQ community and HIV-affected communities as well. So we work around hate violence, intimate partner violence, and other forms of violence as well. We were formed in 1980 by a group of gay men who lived in New York, who were experiencing instances of hate violence being harassed, targeted on the street. And they came together because no one else was responding to those instances of violence, and they were not getting response from the police. They were not getting response from the broader community and social service agencies. So they came together to really take care of their own, and they started providing support for survivors, and also working to hold systems and police and other institutions accountable. And to this day, we continue to have co-located a unique model where we do the services, and we also do the organizing and advocacy work. We run a 24-hour bilingual hotline here at AVP so people can call us at any time if they've experienced violence, and we can help them with immediate safety planning. We can connect them to other resources. We provide counseling, legal services, and other services for survivors. And we also work to change the system so that survivors can get the ongoing support that they need, knowing that we can't provide all of that support. And we also do organizing and advocacy work. On a national level, we coordinate a national coalition of anti-violence organizations that come together also to do advocacy and organizing work and do research. So we put out annual reports every year on hate violence and intimate partner violence in the LGBTQ communities. Beverly, thank you. Brett, welcome. Do you mind telling the viewing audience a little about your work at the Metropolitan Police Department? Sure. Thanks, Corey, and hi, Beverly. It's great to be with you all, and thanks for inviting us. The Metropolitan Police Department is a large urban police department, and several years ago, back in the late 90s, early 2000s, we started to realize that there were several communities in our city, the nation's capital, that were not getting the same amount of attention and service from law enforcement. And so we looked at that, and we decided that we had this community policing model that we've been doing for many, many years, but that model has always been focused geographically. Police tend to focus on borders. This is my jurisdiction. This is your jurisdiction. I have a particular beat I'm responsible for. And we started to think outside of those geographic boundaries and think about demographics, think about groups of people. They may be geographically concentrated in particular areas, but by and large, they are groups of people that socialize, work, live together, and have unique issues that make building relationships with law enforcement difficult. And so we started our, at that time, gay and lesbian liaison unit. We called it the GLLU, which then morphed into what is now our LGBT liaison unit. What that unit does in the other liaison units, part of the special liaison branch, which are the Asian liaison unit, Latino liaison unit, the deaf and hard of hearing liaison unit, and the LGBT liaison unit, is they really focus on three parts to our mission. The first is probably pretty obvious to most people, which is outreach. It is going out into the community and trying to build relationships, strengthen relationships, and create new relationships where we can within underserved communities. The second part of the mission is training and education. And part of that training and education might be obvious, which is training police officers, what these communities are, what their unique issues are, how to treat them respectfully with dignity and professionalism, but also educating the community so that community members know what to expect of law enforcement officers. And then the third part of the mission, and which makes the Metropolitan Police Department actually quite unique, is we have a law enforcement aspect to our liaison branch. We actually are on the streets, policing side by side with police officers throughout the city in all parts. So we're not just going to community meetings and trying to get support and support the community. We're also responding at times of crisis, assisting with investigations and assisting in building sources of information so that we can solve crimes once they occur. So we have the prevention side and then we have the response side. Brett, thank you very much. Now let me set the stage for discussion. In March of this year, the State Department released its annual Human Rights Report. And once again, the report notes examples of violence being committed against LGBTI persons everywhere. There are targeted killings of LGBTI persons perpetrated by family members, neighbors, gangs, and strangers. And police often do not intervene or investigate. These stories need to be told to ensure they become less common. I'm going to start the conversation with a broad question for our panel. You both come from unique institutions and organizations with differing views on how best to respond to bias motivated violence. Can you both explain your approach and what lessons you think are most important to pass on to stakeholders around the world, many of whom are also trying to respond to violence targeting LGBTI persons? Beverly, can I start with you? Sure. First off, I would say that one of the things that we think is really critical in addressing all kinds of violence, but particularly hate violence, is really working from the point of starting with the survivors and the victims. So in our case, we approach our work from a survivor centered and trauma informed perspective. So at the center of everything that we do, we're talking to survivors, interacting with them, finding out what are their needs, what are the solutions that they are most interested in, and we're building our work from there. And we've found that to be the number one step and most important because a lot of times there are all kinds of interventions that people might try to bring into communities. But really, if the communities are not interested in those interventions, obviously they're not going to work. And the community has to be invested in them and working in partnership with providers and other institutions to make them work. So starting there and really talking to community and finding out what's most important. Secondly, again, we feel like it's important to both think about what are the immediate services and support that survivors need. And then in addition to that, what are ways that we can bring survivors together to really address and change policy on an institutional and societal level so that we are not just working to address the crises as they come up, but really working globally to think about, again, prevention. What does that look like? Not that we have all the solutions around what prevention of violence completely looks like, but we know that combining the services with the prevention is really key, helping people put their lives back together, deal with the impact of the violence. And then, how do we work within a broader community of people? Because we know that these instances of violence are happening in all settings in our communities. In fact, we just completed our 2016 annual hate violence report. And one of the key findings is that the majority of the people who've experienced instances of hate violence were familiar with the person who was attacking them. And then also, those people were not only where they're familiar with those people, but those attacks happened in their community and places where they were familiar, in their homes, in their workplaces, from landlords, community members. So broadening out and working with the whole community is important and not just thinking about one sector of the community, but really the whole community. Beverly, thank you, Brett. So, you know, the first thing that I think I recognize is listening to Beverly, although she's with an NGO and I'm with a government organization, law enforcement, we're speaking exactly the same language when we're talking about exactly the same thing. She used the word community probably dozens of times just in the last couple minutes. And communities are made up of individuals. And for us, it's about building relationships with those individuals, with those groups within the community, because if we wait until a bias-related incident or bias-related crime occurs to build relationships, to get people to give us information, to help us respond to that, it's too late. We have to begin building those relationships long before the crisis occurs. And just as an aside, Beverly uses the term hate related violence, bias-related violence, and I use bias-related incident, bias-related crime. We're talking about exactly the same thing. We're not just talking about the obvious someone punches someone and calls them a homophobic name. We're also talking about people who might not be engaging in illegal activity, but are engaging in behavior that is demonstrating hatred, prejudice, bias towards a group of people that may not rise to a criminal act, but is feeding an environment of hatred, bias, and prejudice that we need to be monitoring. We need to be monitoring as a society. We need to be monitoring like groups like AVP that exist out there to do that. But as a police department, we need to be monitoring those types of things that fall below criminal activity, because as we'll talk about later on, those are pointing us in the direction where we need to do more work as a police department, as a city, and as a community at large, to avoid the actual violence crime that will be perpetrated using hatred, bias, or prejudice. So how do we do that? Well, we start building that relationship, like I said, long before the incident occurs. That means not necessarily expecting community members to feel safe coming to us. Police stations are government institutions. They are not exactly the most huggy-feely places for any community member to come to. So we want to meet community members where they feel safe. So you'll find us going to community organization meetings. You'll find us going to their celebrations. You'll find us going to their protests. Not necessarily to say we agree with them, but to show that we are there and we are part of the community in which they have concerns. And by doing that, we're hoping to change the feeling. That vibe of if you were at a party and suddenly a uniformed police officer knocked on the door to that apartment or that home, everyone in the party, the conversation would stop. It would get quiet. People would say, oh my God, what happened? The police are here. We want to change that reaction to when that knock on the door happens or when that uniformed police officer enters the room or the house or the apartment, people look and smile and go, oh, that's officer so-and-so. I know him. Come in. Let us tell you how things are going. That's the type of relationship that we want to build with the communities that we serve so that when a crisis occurs, we aren't introducing ourselves and starting from building trust. That trust takes time to build. It ebbs and flows because of incidents that occur inevitably in any police department in any city. But if you have a strong core relationship, even when those crises come up, where we make mistakes, you can go back to the trust that you have in each other and say, okay, how do we make this better? How do we avoid this happening again in the future? Thank you. Let's now go to our online viewing group at the U.S. Embassy in Santiago, Chile, where human rights officer Maureen McGovern will introduce the group. Then we'll take a couple of questions from the audience. Hi Maureen. Hi Corey, how are you? Good to see you. Here we are in Santiago. We've got representatives of law enforcement here and NGOs. Here in Chile, just like Brett and Beverly as you were speaking, Corey, of course, as you were speaking about earlier, there's many challenges combating hate-based crimes for LGBT people. In Chile, that is also the case. But fortunately, we have a strong community group of the NGOs and law enforcement who are ready to see what, working on this challenge and seeing what they can do to work together better, to work together to have a more effective approach to combating and also preventing these crimes. Thank you so much for including us in this conversation. The first question I have here is to follow up a little bit with you, Brett. There were some questions and actually an amount of what Beverly was saying as well. When there's a victim that is identified and you understand that there's a hate crime behind it, do you have a protocol or a process to assist a victim psychologically? How is it intake in the treatment of that victim or is the department's current protocol to focus just specifically on the crime and on the aggressor? Sure. Thanks for your question Maureen and hello everybody in Santiago. Yes, the Metropolitan Police Department does have a quite detailed protocol. We call it a general order regarding our response to bias-related incidents and crimes and we follow that protocol. It essentially says that number one, we take this very seriously. We have, as recently as 2015, retrained every member of the Metropolitan Police Department on what our policies are so that everyone has an understanding of what is expected of them wherever they are in our chain of command or in the services that they provide. We have various different types of people on our Police Department. We obviously have people like me who are police officers that are out on the street engaging in crime fighting and preventing prevention of crime, but we also have victim advocates. We also have community outreach workers. We also have people who do statistical analysis and all of these people have a role in responding to bias-related crimes and incidents and our policy spells out what their roles are. And essentially what it says is number one, we take this so seriously that the moment an officer or a member of our agency believes that they potentially, a very low standard, right, potentially have a bias-related crime that they need to notify a supervisor and an investigator who should respond to the scene. Now we do that for a couple of reasons. First of all, because we think this is important enough that a supervisor and a detective should be brought in because it gives extra resources, extra experience, and an extra set of eyes and ears to assist, but also there's a bit of a visual that is involved here. What this says to the community members who may be present is, wow, they're taking this seriously. More people are coming to the scene, people that have rank, people that are wearing suits and ties that are actually showing interest in this, and we think that that's important to demonstrate to the community that those types of people are getting involved at the very onset of an investigation into a bias-related crime or incident. The next thing that we have is we have a requirement that the report reflect accurately what we suspect the bias-related crime or incident was, and we have a reporting system that allows drop-down menus and for us to classify those appropriately for the 16 or 17 different classes of people that are protected under our bias-related crimes and incidents statutes. Then we have a rather robust review process. If it's a crime, all right, it goes to an investigator who will investigate the who done it, try and catch that person and hold them responsible for committing this bias-related crime. At the same time, we also have an administrative review so that we're making a clear distinction between the crime fighting and the crime-solving aspect and the getting it right of was this actually a bias-related incident or crime. That's a separate process where a group of people who are very familiar with bias-related crimes and the issues surrounding the communities that we serve come together and review each and every one every month and we say yes this meets the criteria or no it doesn't meet the criteria or in some cases we need more information and then push that back to the investigator to give us more information so that we can make an informed decision. So I hope that answered your question. Thank you. Santiago, do you have another question? We'll be sure to keep our answers brief so that we can get to all the questions. Thanks so much. See another question that I have is and you've touched on it as well but I is how is the DC police worked with local NGOs? You talked a little bit about that relation to stiff building but to comment hate crimes against LGBT people. What's your relationship with the local NGOs? I would say it's rather extensive. There is not a day that goes by that our officers in the LGBT liaison unit and other liaison units in our special liaison branch are not meeting with and interacting with members of the community and the national government or non-government organizations that we work hand in hand with. We lean on them all the time to assist us with formulating policy our response when we make public statements. We're constantly reaching out to them to ensure that what we're doing is consistent with what their needs and concerns are. Thank you so much. Now let's turn to our viewing group at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, Canada where Dick Kustin, cultural attaché at the embassy will introduce the group. Greetings Dick. That has been a very progressive society and they take pride in their multiculturalism. In fact multiculturalism has been a part of this society since 1971 when the first prime minister Trudeau made it officially a part of policy here. There are pride parades in every major city in Canada, same-sex marriage became legal in Canada in 2005 making Canada the fourth country in the world to legalize it. Now in 2015 police reported almost 1400 criminal incidents in Canada were motivated by hate. That's an increase of 5% from the previous year 2014. So these statistics by the way just came out in the last week so we're kind of still processing these. The increase in the total number of incidents was largely attributable to an increase in police reported hate crimes motivated by hatred of either religion which was about 40 incidents or of a race or ethnicity which was about 30 incidents. Police reported hate crimes targeting sexual orientation accounted for the highest percentage of violent crimes in 2015 that's about 59%. So here to talk about this today we have as I said we have a great group here. They are people from cultural organizations, auto police, Muslim groups, social service agencies. Joining us to start with is Imani and Imani you have a question. Can you tell us where you're from and give us your question. What organization are you in? Oh I'm a summer hire I'm with the med union. And my question was I love how both of the speakers talked about the relationship with local community. My question was regarding your relationship with government. Do you all have voice support or funding from anyone like the mayor, the governor, the senator and how they have a pledge to work with policy regarding the different issues and hate crimes committed against the LGBTQ plus community. Thank you so much Beverly that sounds like a great question for you and just to recap it's about government support including funding for local organizations and whether you have any commitments from your local or statewide government. Yes at AVP we actually have relationships with local, national and and you know government regionally as well. Part of a big part of our funding here is government funding and interestingly enough a number of the grants that we get from government come from directly from funding for violence against women. So a few years ago we worked with a coalition of organizations here in the United States to make sure that our violence against women's act was the first federal legislation that was LGBT inclusive and through that funding then we've been able to get funds for a number of work that support survivors and victims of domestic violence and intimate partner violence as well as hate violence and the funding covers a lot of our direct support work and we also get money from our city councils or city government local council members are able to designate small pots of money to support our work as well. That work that funding is really really critical to us and it helps build relationships so some of our funding allows us to provide technical assistance and training to service providers around the country who are expected to then make sure that they're delivering culturally competent services to members of the LGBTQ community. Great Beverly thank you Brett I think we know where your funding comes from so we'll go to another question from Ottawa. Dick do you have another question present to us? This one is from Amira. Amira where are you from? So I'm from the National Council of Canadian Muslims we are a national human rights organization serving the community across the country. I really appreciate you know this invitation from the US Embassy very glad to join you. I wanted to ask a question I'm sort of walking again through the process and we've heard from the police services a little bit about the process but I didn't hear very much information about what happens when there's a decision to actually lay a charge in relation to a hate crime. Is that information sort of provided to the wider community? Do we do communities actually receive you know as your updated annual reports about you know the numbers of hate crimes the numbers of bias incidents as well as the numbers of actual charges coming into these cases and what the conviction rate looks like? Great thank you for that question. I wonder Beverly do you have any comment on like the the gathering of statistics or data for these types of crimes? Unfortunately the data that's available is very limited that we are able to get from the government. There you know there are some statistics you know one of the things that we've found is I mean directly to the questions raised we are not regularly able to access information about convictions about you know sort of the process. We work actually with a group of organizations in New York locally that is continually working to improve police accountability with the police and I would say that that's a serious work in progress. We don't you know we directly work with the police here and actually have at times trained the police officers in LGBT cultural competence specifically around intimate partner violence and hate violence and that you know is really glad to hear that that's happening in in DC as well. That trust and training is really critical and it needs to be ongoing. We have not gotten the relationship to the place where I think the community is getting the data that it would like to get regularly from the police about you know how often people are going to the police even. One of the you know in the data that we collect we know that again a majority of people who come to us are not going to the police and they're telling us that often not going to the police because they're often afraid you know based on past instances. So we play you know we try to play an important role in sort of being both able to work with the police and also work to hold the police accountable and to get some of those statistics that you talk about in that ongoing dialogue and communication about what is happening. Often people will say that when they file the case they don't you know even when they have had directly been impacted they don't often get information that they they feel like they need and we can sometimes play sort of an interim role in helping to kind of be a link for individuals to get some more information that that they need. So I think that that's still you know sort of we're still working on that certainly in New York and I think in most places around the country I'm curious to hear a little bit more about what's happening in DC. Yes thank you Brett do you have anything to add from the police perspective here? Sure so I can tell you in Washington DC the system that we have in place is that on a monthly basis we update our annual our two dates reported bias related crimes and so we do that on a monthly basis with the understanding that the community knows that those numbers could change throughout the process that we never are are completely satisfied with our determination that something is or is not a bias or a crime because the investigation continues and it could be two weeks later two years later we may receive more information and we may update that so we do that on a monthly basis here and then annually we publish a report this goes to your question goes to something that is so important and it's a national and international issue in law enforcement and that is about transparency right because when there's transparency and when the community knows that they're receiving information and they can trust that information from law enforcement then there's legitimacy and that's the second part of this is that when we the law enforcement officers that serve in those these communities are viewed as having legitimate authority and legitimate reason to do what we do then it benefits everyone we don't have to physically fight with people to get them to comply and people call upon us because they feel that they're getting something and they're being made or kept safe so this goes to really the core of that is making sure that people know the information we're getting and also trusting that we are sharing that information on a timely basis so that they can be educated and then the last point that I'll make and Beverly sort of alluded to this but I want to make sure that that our listeners around the world understand in the United States each jurisdiction within the United States each state has its own reporting standards and that could actually change from county to county and so we literally have 50 different systems going on around the country and so it's difficult to answer as Beverly said this is a work in progress to try and standardize all of this reporting from around the country so that when the FBI the federal bureau of investigation does their annual hate crimes report it's reflecting as much of the information that's come to law enforcement around our country which doesn't include reporting for instance to organizations like AVP third-party reporting because if it doesn't make it to law enforcement it doesn't make it into that FBI report and that's problematic because we aren't getting everything great thank you and let's take some questions from the chat space or those following along on twitter using the hashtag LGBTI rights we have a question from Tunisia it is illegal to be LGBT here and there are a lot of hate crimes how do you teach the younger generations how to be tolerant and accept others think we can go to Brett for that first well you know I don't have to be a police officer to answer this question I think we all agree that this starts long before law enforcement or government gets involved this is about how we raise our children this is about the places where we pray the the the social makeup of our society and that is where hatred bias and prejudice is born long before someone commits a crime and so we really I think all would agree and again I'm not speaking as a police officer I'm speaking as a person in our society who's a member of many of the different communities that we serve that we need to dedicate more resources long before the crisis happens we need to be educating children and allowing children to engage in diverse play groups and diverse experiences in their lives so that by the time they become adults and need to make that decision of am I going to be the person of inclusivity and respect and dignity or am I going to be a person of exclusion and hatred and bias that there's not even a question in their minds that children don't have that they're not born with an intrinsic hatred or bias that's something that's learned and so we really have to work on educating as young as possible so that that generation grows up and it becomes unacceptable to them to to engage in these activities I'm sure Beverly has a lot more to add to this this is a really important question so Beverly I'd like to hear I'd like to hear your thoughts on that I definitely agree starting young and continuing you know it's it's never too late to talk about these issues and it's never too early to talk about these issues you know definitely I would say we absolutely feel that addressing and talking about systems of oppression racism homophobia transphobia are really important key components to really thinking about and addressing preventing violence we are often you know afraid to you know sort of talk about the underlying bias that really allows people to you know see other people as less than and different and you know easy targets for abuse and harassment and so you know really starting there there are a lot of programs working now in the United States to embed this into school curriculum you know even you know very young age you know elementary school because it isn't those ages where children are able to receive this information in a really open way and where they are starting to you know ask really natural questions about gender and gender identity about race and and difference cultural differences and so you know really not being afraid to have those conversations and you know then we have to model so we have to also talk to people about you know people who are different from us we have to be willing to go into settings that are less comfortable for us and really talk to people and learn from each other be willing to ask questions and for those of us who are people who hold some of those marginalized identities we also have to be willing to engage in that conversation in a way that of course feels safe for us one of the things that we found here in the in the United States you know across the the country is that the more people have been willing to come out talk to their neighbors talk to their family members talk to their friends then the more people you know they have opportunities to sort of ask questions and engage and you know the the issues are demystified for people so some of it is really just having simple conversations and then finding ways to embed those conversations into the institutions that we that we have right you know training police officers training service providers to making sure that they are responsible for providing safe environments for everybody in in their community and that they're really paying attention to the ways that they might not even be aware that they are that they are playing out those biases you know in a day-to-day and so I think it really there's so many ways but it's really just about having more conversations among us and creating more opportunities for that dialogue Beverly thank you I actually have a there's a follow-up question here from Tom in Monterey you spoke a bit about coming out and one of the difficulties to that can often be religion or religious groups so how does religion play a role in shaping attitudes toward LGBTI individuals shown definitely in the United States that one of the major factors for people not supporting LGBTQ rights and equality is religiosity so it is true that for many people the religious institutions are are encouraging and and you know keeping them from really seeing LGBTQ people as equal and and of value and you know a group that should have equal rights um so that is definitely an issue that you know we have to deal with and at the same time there are also a lot of welcoming religious communities and so one of the things that we've been able to do in a lot of places here is really sort of leverage and use those welcoming voices of religious leaders to really you know help change the tide you know studies have been done that really talk to individuals who will say you know even though their religion might be teaching them that it's wrong to be LGBTQ if they again if they know somebody personally who is LGBTQ particularly if it's a family member a friend a co-worker or someone that they have close contact with then they start to think about that a little bit differently and um they they start to challenge those beliefs a little bit um so I think you know sort of respecting um certainly people's um religious beliefs and values but also knowing that within individual religions there's a range um of how people interpret the religious um those religious um doctrines and bringing to the forefront people who are of faith who feel differently and supportive about LGBTQ people and I know that that is also happening worldwide we connect with some organizations here who are doing work globally with with faith leaders and faith-based institutions and communities really to get out the word that there are people of faith who are supportive of LGBTQ people as well Beverly thank you very much shifting over to Brett here and very briefly how can police departments be encouraged to fully investigate LGBTI related hate crimes if they may not be willing interested or able sure so this is a question I get from around the world when I speak to community groups that are trying to encourage their police departments to be more accepting and open of LGBT issues um you know the first step is visibility the first step is is helping your police department leaders realize that the community exists whether or not they can actually see that community or whether or not they're hearing from that community on a regular basis um what we know is that LGBT people um are able to assimilate into the community at large much more easily than other groups that are underserved and so they oftentimes go unnoticed by politicians and police executives and so it's important to bring that information to them to try and help them understand that this population exists where it exists and then try and then turn this into how it benefits the police department how it benefits the police department when they take seriously bias related crimes you don't just have individuals who are satisfied with the services of their police department and who feel like they trust and can depend upon their police department you now have communities you have large groups of people who are supportive and encourage and want to be part of the work the police department is doing and I can't think of a police executive out there who wouldn't want more people being supportive and welcoming and in fact trusting their law enforcement agency bias related crimes and taking them seriously and investigating them is one way to bring in just more than one victim it's a way to bring in groups of people and help those people work through something that is very scary someone that is uh that makes them feel unsafe and if you can do that you can transform the the the perspective of the community about your police department and even about your jurisdiction at large thank you and we have a quick question from the world bank and this this one's for brett did the dc police department put in place the lgbt unit as a result of adoption of a law on hate crimes or did the police unit exist prior to legislation on this issue and further more do you know how many lgbt units are generally established well that was more than one question i'm not sure that's allowed okay um so the answer to the first question is did we form the lgbt liaison unit as a result of the bias related crime uh crime law the answer is no in fact washington dc has had legislation surrounding uh hate crimes and human rights that include lgbt issues since the 1970s um and it wasn't until as i said the late 90s that the gay and lesbian liaison unit that became the lgbt liaison unit was actually created it was actually created really in a grassroots type of way we had two lesbian officers on our police department that wanted to do more in the community in which they lived and played as police officers and so they made a proposal to their local commander that commander thought it was a great idea and then the chief of police said we can't be doing this in just one area we need to grow this citywide and so at that time chief charles ramsey expanded that work citywide um i forgot the third part of the question do you know how many are generally established uh i guess are in the country sure so it is not uncommon now in the united states for most police departments to have at least an individual designated as a community liaison to whatever community we're talking about as far as marginalized or underserved communities with regard to specifically lgbt that is still not common practice for most police departments your larger urban police departments tend to have at least one person designated as if not a liaison a point of contact or a community outreach person um and then there are probably i would say somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 large police departments in the country that have either full-time liaison officers or maybe even a unit that is responding to issues in that community great thank you beaverley have a good question for you can you highlight best practices for tailoring advocacy and lobbying efforts toward implementation and enforcement of laws rather than just towards the passage of policy and legislature um store best practices for laws for advocacy and lobbying okay how to get those policy policy goals achieved sure you know one of the things that i would say as a best practice generally um and i think this goes um for all of our work um in the anti-violence movement is we know that um the uh people who are most impacted while of course um hate violence impacts our whole community um and certainly a whole lgbtq community um we know those who are most impacted and um there was a mention earlier um i think in ottawa around the increase in violent crimes um here um in the united states and um i would not be surprised that this was true in other parts of the world as well um the folks who are most impacted particularly by most violent instances of hate violence are um those who are most marginalized so they are people of color within the lgbtq community they are often um young people people who have low income and trans and gender non-conforming folks um so one of the first things that you know we try to do is make sure that um those folks who are most impacted are represented in the work that we're doing and really as much as possible leading the work that we're doing um because those voices are the voices that need to be heard so that we're making sure that whatever uh policy work that we're doing um is really addressing the needs of those who are most impacted so um number one i would say start there um secondly um we feel really strongly that we um cannot and do not want to do this work alone as an lgbtq community and some of our strongest work has happened in coalition with other organizations um for instance the um legislation the violence against women's act that i mentioned um the year that we were able to um get lgbt inclusion into that law was the same year that we worked in coalition with a number of organizations around the nation to also make sure that indigenous communities were codified into that law um immigrants were codified into that law um so really working across community is important right now one of the things that we're doing is we're um we've started a national hate tracking um project with other um organizations representing other communities as well um so i think that that's really important and then you know i think some of the things that we all know about you know sort of uh uh policy and lobbying um you know telling stories um are really important and impactful so you know bringing people forward who are willing to tell their stories um making what's happened to people you know of course bring statistics we you know we feel really strongly about um our research and our statistics but really the personal stories and the personal experiences are really powerful um and i think make all the difference thank you beveley that's that's good advice um now let's go back to our viewing group at the u.s embassy in chile santiago do you have two more questions for the panel thank you yes i'm cori um actually beveley just touched on this a little bit but i'd like to hear a little bit more from brett um about um how does your office deal with um attacks and hate crimes against trans women who are sex workers and um specifically do you have any protocols with intake investigation and follow-up that applies to hate crimes against women's sex workers sure so let me address the the first part of your question and that is that uh we here in washington dc um we we do not judge those that are victims of crime um and and respond based upon what their behavior was we respond to victims of crime and provide all victims of crimes with the services and the respect and the dignity that they should be getting and so one of the things that we recognize here in washington dc is that particularly trans women of color are oftentimes in uh situations that they're not choosing to be in they are they are choosing they they are choosing to survive um and having to engage in behavior that may be criminalized um and the fact that they may be victims of crime as a result of being in those situations does not diminish the fact that they were in fact victims of crime we are very lucky here in washington dc um the sergeant that works for me in charge of the lgbt liaison unit is an openly trans woman um we have openly trans officers on our police department and in our city government we have a very strong partnership with trans organizations here in washington dc uh to include some that provide specific outreach to our commercial sex workers and so we have strong relationships with them and we bring them along in the process to help them build that trust with those victims of crime so that they are more likely to cooperate but also we have we're very lucky we are we're in the nation's capital and we have resources that we have services that are specifically tailored for members of the transgender community with regard to your second question of um how do we do we have policies specifically on how to deal with um transgender commercial street sex workers um we have a general policy that is um that guides our officers on how to deal with interactions and handling interactions with the transgender community across the board regardless of the circumstances the life circumstances they're in and that policy is very clear it is one that we have hammered on for many years since we put it in place and we believe that it's a best practice around the world thank you uh Santiago do you have another question and we'll keep our answers brief so we can get back up to Ottawa um that's that's actually the those were the questions that we have Cory great thanks so much um those are really great questions we appreciate it now let's return to our viewing group in Canada Ottawa do you have two more questions for us hi Cory yes actually we have three if you're willing to entertain a third one in place of Santiago but we'll leave that up to you but we're going to start with Valerie Valerie where you're from South East Ottawa community health center I work as a committee worker there and and one of my mission is to build inclusive and equitable partnerships and I champion non-conventional ways of engaging people so I was wondering knowing the power of the police knowing the legitimacy of the police what is the police in the United States there where you are doing about training or facilitating equity and inclusion towards the mainstream population so actually I think I'll start with Beverly with that one to see what kind of training that the simple society and NGO community can provide to police departments and to governments and then we can turn to Brett to see what internal training is is going on how's that sound Beverly yes um and I think her question might have also been about what uh training with police is doing for the community at large which is an interesting question I have not um seen that happen in terms of training that and terms of training that organizations um can provide for police officers I I feel very strongly that um it is important for police officers to be trained um regularly um this is a really hard thing to I think make impactful um because one there's you know limited time uh to train police officers um and you know I've actually you know sort of been in these rooms where you know people are going to a mandatory training whether it's police or fire department and um not everybody there is taking the issue as seriously as you would like them to um and really sort of bringing their full selves into the space so one of the things that we've found is that um for us here it's important to have police officers and police officials um there in the training it's important that it is mandatory um and it is important to pair community members with police in training so as much as it can be a partnership that I think makes for a better process because you get the direct information from members of the community about what is needed and um and um you know a different level of uh interaction um but having police officers they're also participating and leaving those trainings is important um to really send the message that that this is important um and critical and the police department is taking it seriously and knowing that the trainings are happening from the highest down to the lowest um and that it's really happening not also even just with police officers but everyone within the police department who people might be interacting with because it might be one thing if you know a officer on the street um is well trained but if someone that goes into a police station and is talking to a clerk um you know everyone needs to be well trained um so I think that that's very important Beverly thanks Brett do you have any comments on the training opportunities within the department but also if the department is working you know with the communities as well sure I couldn't agree more with Beverly this can't be a a one-shot deal where an officer comes through the police academy and we certify them as being culturally competent in filling the box um because what we know is these are not situations that come up often enough that officers are exercising those skills and so we need to continue to educate those officers so in Washington DC we do scenario-based training both in our recruit training and in our in-service training for veteran officers where whether or not we're doing firearms training or we're doing handcuffing techniques or we're doing driver's training the scenarios that we throw at them may include LGBT related issues so for instance we may be retraining our officers on traffic stops and one of the issues that may come up is what if the individual who presents an ID to you is a member of the transgender community and the ID does not in fact reflect the person who's in front of you as far as the gender that's reflected on their driver's license so that's one way in which we're doing that here in Washington DC we also use online training and we partner with the communities that we serve so that when we created that training back in 2015 we brought in community leaders and key individuals in the communities we serve and had them be part of raising the issues that needed to be addressed most and in fact we videotaped interviews with them so that our officers were hearing directly from community members in their words and looking at those human beings maybe not live because we had to do it by video because they couldn't make it to each and every training and get the same message out but we felt that that was very effective thank you Ottawa do you have another question Adam has a question Adam where are you from I'm from Ottawa I'm a leader in the African community I operated a program encouraging the community youth to get on from activity through entrepreneurship development and I'm still the leader of the African community I want to know from the facilitator sometimes things unsaid may remain the most important things we are discussing hate crime against LGBT I wonder if you can extend these get comments on hate crime on black communities I'm talking about in Canada but definitely there's not a school in the US which I've had a lot of story about these also include Islamic community and youth synagogue which are being destroyed so I want to know what is the scope of this discussion great thank you very much Beverly I might toss that to you first and if you couldn't hear it I believe it was about you know extending hate crimes and understanding hate crimes in the broader sense of hate crimes and hate violence not just toward LGBTI persons if you could speak a little bit to that yeah I think that's very important I'm glad that the question was raised as I said before we you know we know that within the LGBTQ community the people who are most often experiencing violence or most impacted are people with multiple marginalized identities so people who are LGBTQ and people of color people who are transgender not performing so there's no way to separate out as far as we're concerned the issues of homophobia and transphobia with racism they are interrelated and so we really attempt as much as possible to work across community and even though our organization is LGBT specific we make a really strong effort to really build bridges and linkages with organizations that are working on violence in other communities because obviously there's an overlap you know a lot of times people will say okay so there's hate violence in the LGBTQ community and there's hate violence in communities of color and you know we sort of forget the fact that there are LGBTQ people of color in those communities who are also experiencing violence so we try to both in spaces where there's a larger conversation about hate violence make sure that we're lifting up LGBTQ specific violence as a part of that and in LGBTQ spaces we're really trying to also increase people's awareness about other kinds of hate violence that impact other communities we have to work across community and we have to look at the interrelationship of both those communities and the violence and really not try to separate them out because it's a broader societal intolerance that is leading to all of these kinds of hate violence and so the more that we can kind of talk about our work in a real intersectional way then the more we can address across the board and really not just silo out one community or the other great thank you okay we have some more good questions from online viewers uh Priscilla in Guadalajara as well as viewers at the US embassies in Honduras and Quito are asking and Beverly this will be for you does your work include training journalists so that they report hate crimes um that's a very good question we actually um do a lot of media advocacy work um so for us that encompasses a couple of different things one um you know we were one of the really first organizations that was talking about um hate violence in the LGBT community on a national level and again sort of bringing statistics to the forefront um what we found is that we hear about instances of violence in a number of different ways um because we have relationships with community partners all across the country sometimes people are coming to us directly um and particularly when we're talking about trans and gender non-conforming folks what we find a lot is that the media is still often miss reporting um instances of of hate violence so they are um either not reporting them all at all um if the um the survivors and the victims are trans and gender non-conforming they may also be misgendering and misnaming those survivors and victims um so often community members will come to us and they'll say um you know there's a report about this incident um but we have the real information about who that person was or this incident we know has happened in our community and it's not being reported about at all in the media um so we do a fair amount of work um in the moment working with it um with reporters who are who are reporting um sometimes misreporting um we are working with news outlets to get them to report more and to report accurately um and we are trying to also do some education um uh you know sort of proactive education to really give reporters the tools so that they can um again more be more culturally competent in how they're reporting instances of hate violence in LGBTQ community. Beverly thank you we have a question from embassy Havana and Brett I'm going to turn this to you how can authorities and institutions prepare to respond to an event like the one that occurred in the state of Florida at the Pulse nightclub so this this question hits close to home um pulse happened that the pulse shootings happened the morning of our capital pride festival here in washington dc and lieutenant jim young uh who is the liaison for the orlando police department assisted him in getting that liaison up to speed and so felt very connected there um what what needs to happen is again going back to creating this relationship before that crisis occurs because lieutenant jim young had a long standing relationship with the lgbt community he knew who the community leaders were he knew what resources were available and he knew where some of the groups were going to be congregating where resources need to be needed to be brought for crisis intervention for counseling and that sort of thing um also there there people may not realize this we not only have local liaisons we we have throughout the world liaison officers and there were officers from around the world working in lgbt units and communities who contacted orlando or contacted us in the united states and we were pushing all of that information and resources to them in orlando but it really comes down to building that relationship and that trust before the crisis occurs thank you beaverley i have a question for you from heartland alliance international how does mental health and psychosocial well-being impact on responses to hate crime and access to justice you know mental health is a big part of our work you know we really firmly believe that the work that we do to support survivors of violence is a part of the uh the uh formula for solution for prevention and um so you know one we believe that um if survivors are able to get the mental health support that they need um as survivors um that we help break the cycle of violence um that often happens in our communities um we help um give survivors the tools so that they can you know get involved in advocacy and organizing if they wish to um and work to um again identify other prevention strategies and other strategies that we should um we should and can be using to make sure that additional survivors are getting the support that they need um so um we think that mental health is really key um and is a big part of the work that we do um and abp and um many of the organizations that we connect with are doing some sort of mental health service provision um for survivors as well great thank you and beaverley i have a final question for you also from embassy le longway in malawi this question regarding transgender issues how does violence impact transgender persons and what are their particular needs well i am not transgender um so you know i um uh i'm reluctant to speak for the transgender community but i can share some of the experiences of the folks that we work with here because um we in the united states right now are really experiencing a serious crisis of violence impacting transgender non-conforming people this is a really huge issue um and um we are sort of facing a situation where we are um counting um a number of homicides every year last year um uh 2016 um we um there were 25 homicides i believe of transgender non-conforming folks this year already um this year in the united states we have been monitoring um over 20 instances of homicides um so you know this is um an increasing concern um people are being attacked as they're going about their business um their regular business um the majority of the victims of homicide are transgender women of color in the united states um and a lot of times there's often an inter-relationship between intimate partner violence and hate violence where um a partner a date um someone who might be um seeing uh someone who is performing sex work um you know there's a lot of ways someone who um is just attracted to a trans woman are committing acts of violence um we had one case here in new york city um most recently where a young transgender woman of color was attacked um by a young man who was attracted to her after his friends said um identified her as trans um and he was so embarrassed um that he was attracted to a trans woman that he beat her to death um and so you know we're seeing that you know trans women of color in particular are um often feeling unsafe just being who they are um and so there are a lot of ways that we um as a culture need to really address that um and again address transphobia that's inherent in all of that and also come together to provide um safety and safe places um for trans women of color because um you know when you ask how people are experiencing it they're experiencing trauma and fear every time we hear about another attack another murder um and you know there isn't unfortunately a good solution because um you know you have to go about your life um and live your life um and there's no way necessarily to be absolutely safe um we're seeing a lot of instances of harassment um in public spaces here in the united states in our cities we're seeing a lot in public transportation um subways and buses and um a lot of people who are witnessing these instances of violence are afraid or unwilling to do anything so one of the things that we're doing here um recently along with other groups is really um creating uh some tools and training for bystanders so people understand that how important bystander intervention is and they have the tools to know how to intervene in a safe way um uh as they feel comfortable but um but standing up for people who are experiencing harassment is really important and it's an important step in preventing more serious acts of violence Beverly thank you it looks like we are almost out of time but Brett and Beverly would you like to share any final thoughts and Brett I'll start with you sure I would just like to again thank the State Department and thank Beverly for for allowing me to be part of this and and just really encourage everyone around the world um to take the the very small bit of information we've been able to impart here and continue this conversation because um this can't be solved in an hour and 15 minutes um it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of people sitting down and coming together and communicating about these issues and the transparency that we talked about um is important that that all voices are heard so that we build that trust and Beverly briefly any final thoughts I would just did all that thank you um there's so much more to talk about um you know and I think we have to think about prevention and solutions in creative ways as well um and think about ways that um in community we can build systems and structures for accountability for education for cultural change um because it has to go much farther than just policies and laws um there's a lot more that has to happen in our communities well Beverly Brett thank you for contributing your expertise and insights to this important conversation and a special thanks to the audiences and organizers at US embassies in Ottawa Canada and Santiago Chile and thank you to all of our online viewers including those watching with viewing groups across the world at Embassy Quito Ecuador Embassy Havana Cuba Embassy Tegucigalpa Honduras Consulate Monterrey Mexico Consulate Guadalajara Mexico American Space Cali Colombia Binational Center in Guayaquil Ecuador American Corner at Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago Chile Embassy Monrovia in Liberia Embassy Longway Malawi and the International Law Enforcement Academy Academy program Embassy Port of Spain Trinidad American Center Trieste, Italy we hope this conversation will continue and the Department of State in Washington stands ready to continue to facilitate dialogue and conversation on this issue please don't hesitate to reach out to us and our colleagues at embassies to share ideas and suggestions of additional steps we may take pride is really a celebration of the strength and resilience of the LGBTI community the stories that we have heard today are a testament to that resilience and a tribute to all who fight for human rights and human dignity for everyone no matter who they are or who they love thank you for participating today and keeping the dialogue going