Montclair Police Department Anti-Hate Crime Community Taskforce

The Police Department of the Township of Montclair, New Jersey seeks support through this solicitation to launch the Montclair Police Department Anti-Hate Crime Community Taskforce. The Taskforce project will begin its planning phase on October 1, 2021 and operate on a grant-funded basis until September 30, 2024. The Montclair Police Department seeks $300,000 in funding to support this project, which will implement the established best practices in combating hate crimes through community collaboration.

In the last two years, hate crimes have been on the rise across the United States, reaching their highest nationwide levels in over a decade. Unfortunately, Montclair is no exception: the Township has been rocked by bias incidents targeting community members from multiple groups, including on the basis of religion, race, and sexual orientation.

The program will be overseen by an Anti-Hate Crimes Taskforce assembled specifically for this purpose, comprised of representatives from Montclair PD, community organizations, the school system, and higher education. Through this program, community organizations will partner with Montclair PD to host community-based events for raising awareness about bias crimes and how to report them. These organizations will also recruit individuals from their constituencies to be trained as advocates and liaisons for individuals who are victims of hate crimes.

This program will also provide for the formation of a Bias Crimes Unit in Montclair, expanding the existing role of the Bias Crime Officer. It will support department-wide training on hate crimes reporting and investigation, community trust building, and cultural competency. Montclair PD will collaborate with its community partners to develop and implement these culturally-informed trainings.

At the end of the period of performance, Montclair PD will have created shareable and scalable curricula for training police officers, emergency service dispatchers, and community members on identifying and reporting hate crimes while supporting victims and witnesses. Montclair will also have robust data on hate crimes and bias incidents within the township.

The design of this program emphasizes that hate crimes affect the whole community, and that the whole community must be engaged with efforts to prevent them to seek justice for both individual victims and the community as a whole. By leveraging evidence-based best practices and existing community networks, Montclair will develop a program with positive effects extending beyond the area of hate crimes and improving community-police relations overall, making Montclair a safer and healthier place to live for every member of our diverse community.