‘Break the cycle of fear’

In a first for the Commonwealth, police personnel recently attended a two-day training that aims to raise their awareness, understanding, and sensitivity of issues relating to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and intersex community. The training was held last Tuesday and Wednesday at the Department of Public Safety academy in Susupe.

Helping the LGBTQI community break the cycle of fear and be judged in reporting hate crimes is one of the aims of the training, said U.S. Attorney General for the Districts of Guam and CNMI Alicia Limtiaco.

“That’s why we’re doing this. We’re trying to break the cycle of people who feel that they can’t trust or don’t feel safe in reporting [hate crimes],” said Limtiaco. “We want to get the message out that it is important to report [hate crimes]. We want to make sure that we train our law enforcers, so they are sensitized and become aware [of these situations]. So that when they go out there and interact with the community, it would show that they would not judge people and they would treat everyone professionally regardless of whoever you are. Because they took an oath, to serve the public and keep the community safe.”

Limtiaco said that raising the level of awareness on the LGBTQI community would help law enforcers like police officers in handling possible hate crimes. “Because people might be targeted because of who they are. People have prejudices and biases. There are some who want to hurt persons of different ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

“If that is the motive for hurting or killing someone, then that is a possible hate crime. Experiences of our law enforcement officers and the LGBTQI community in the past several years have been shared in this training. There might have been hate crime elements to it, so we need to do more investigation.”

Limtiaco said there are incidents and situations that were shared that were never reported, with the victims afraid that they would be judged because of who they are. She added police officers also learned relevant terms to prevent misconceptions and misunderstandings from those reporting certain hate crimes.

“They learned how to build trust so that members of the LGBTQI community could also trust them. They also were taught relevant terms, so as to understand certain misconceptions and misunderstandings, strategies and resources,” said Limtiaco, who added that they are also planning to hold a similar event in other sectors of the community.

“We also plan to go next to the school system, along with the public and private sectors. Bullying had become an issue both in Guam and the CNMI, especially for LGBTQI youth. But we’re trying to address that, especially on social media. We’re doing outreach to explain the power and influence social media holds.”

She added that discussions with different members of both communities in Guam and the CNMI would continue. “We’re going to continue the discussions with our law enforcement officers and the entire community. Some people don’t know a hate crime when it is happening. Sometimes it may characterize a simple type of criminal activity.”

Learning about LGBTQI issues
DPS spokesperson Jason Tarkong, who was among the police officers who attended the two-day training, said the seminar is in line with the government’s program to educate police officers on how to properly handle issues involving the LGBTQI community.

“These include interview skills and recognizing how they would want to be referred to. You better be careful what you do while you are on duty or off duty, and how would you approach certain situations. We want to make sure our officers are trained properly in what terminologies to use and what not to use because it would make a difference and it is a violation of federal rights.”

Tarkong said as police officers they must treat everybody equally, “regardless of race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. We need to respect those rights and we need to treat them properly and that is the purpose of this two-day training.”

He added that there had been several incidents in the CNMI that are classified as hate crimes against LGBTQI community members. “There are several incidents that may be classified as hate crimes. Some have gone to court where the victims came forward. Some suspects have been arrested, charged, and were convicted.”

“I knew of two particular cases…but [hate crime] is not that common here in the CNMI. The usual crimes that we have are assault and battery and domestic violence. Usually relationship type and it is very rare that we have hate crimes for LGBTQI. But does it happen? Yes.”

Coalition
Pride Marianas board chair Frankie Eliptico said being part of the coalition is their way of continuing to raise awareness about the LGBTQI community. “We’re providing voluntary service as part of a coalition where we assist in providing this kind of sensitivity training.”

Pride Marianas, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, DPS, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are members of the coalition.

Eliptico said the coalition also plans to go to other law enforcement agencies. “It started with DPS, but we’re also going to hold similar training with other law enforcement agencies. We’re just happy to be part of this activity.”

“It is important to raise not only DPS but also the entire community’s awareness of LGBT issues. This is the first time that this happened in the CNMI. We’re glad that DPS made sure that they are at the forefront of this kind of training.”