FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Mark Genatempo
Director – Strategic Operations
Ph: 732-766-2729
American Law Enforcement Expert Leads First-Ever Program Against Hate Crimes In Europe; Briefs U.S. Commission on Progress in Five Countries
PRINCETON, N.J., MAY 10, 2006 — As religious and ethnic tensions simmer across Europe, an American law enforcement expert is leading a unique international program to train police there to identify, respond to and prevent hate crimes.
“Police agencies must act to ensure that all of the people in their communities are treated fairly and equally, so that when problems occur members of minority groups feel confident that they can work with local police,” said Paul G. Goldenberg, who began his law enforcement career as a police officer and decorated undercover agent and later specialized in combating hate crime. Goldenberg is the former head of the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office of Bias Crimes and Community Relations.
Goldenberg and his Princeton-based firm, National Public Safety Strategies (NPSS), are leading efforts to implement the first law enforcement program dedicated to fighting bias-related crime in Europe and Central Asia.
Goldenberg heads the Law Enforcement Officers Program for Combating Hate Crimes of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has 55 member countries. The program is administered through the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.
NPSS utilizes a team of international law enforcement officials to work with police in individual countries. They establish training and programs to collect data on hate crimes, analyze patterns and trends and encourage reporting from victims, who previously may have been reluctant to come forward.
They also work with nongovernmental agencies, human rights advocates and representatives and groups from the individual minority communities, bringing them together with police officials — often for the first time — in a “capacity building” initiative to discuss existing problems and cooperate in prosecuting and preventing hate crimes.
Goldenberg and NPSS staff also regularly travel to hot spots in participating countries to assess particular situations, review local police efforts and offer advice and assistance. In recent months they were in Paris during the recent widespread demonstrations and violence, in Ukraine and in Serbia, where they are helping to establish that nation’s first office to investigate hate crimes.
Goldenberg has been a leader in international efforts that over the past year have produced a series of milestones in fighting hate crimes in Europe and Central Asia.
-
Goldenberg led a team that assisted in drafting the legal definition for hate crimes, which was adopted by the OSCE as the model for use by its member nations.
-
He was part of a group, working with an American Jewish Committee initiative, which developed a legal definition of anti-Semitism that OSCE has adopted as a standard for member nations, to train and guide police in assessing incidents and to determine when to pursue criminal charges.
-
NPSS created a template for the first standardized bias crimes data collection system for European law enforcement agencies. This model allows for the tracking and analysis of hate crimes. OSCE has approved the template for use by its member countries to establish such data collection systems.
“There have been many calls for action in Europe because of the many changes, political and demographic, that have occurred there,” Goldenberg said. “In law enforcement’s fight against intolerance, we must ensure security while equally advancing knowledge.”
Goldenberg reported on the program’s progress this week in a public Capitol Hill briefing to the U.S. Helsinki Commission, an independent government agency monitoring human rights chaired by U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and co-chaired by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) [Transcripts and copies of testimony are available from the commission, formally the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, on its Web site at www.CSCE.gov.]
Goldenberg told the commission that training and implementation are already under way in five countries — Spain, Hungary, Ukraine, Serbia and Croatia — and that other European nations are expressing interest in the program.
Helsinki Commission Counsel Knox Thames praised Goldenberg's work and the effect the international team is having on the fight against bias-related crime. “Paul and his cadre of law enforcement specialists have done an outstanding job of creating and implementing the OSCE program on hate crimes training,” Thames said. “The program is making a difference through Paul's hard work and the support of the OSCE. We hope to see an improvement in police reporting on hate crimes when these types of crimes occur in the future.”
About Paul Goldenberg
Paul G. Goldenberg has played a key role in setting domestic and international policy for the legislation and investigation of hate crimes, police/community capacity building and domestic terrorism. He is the principal homeland security policy adviser for the County Executives of America (CEA) and developed The International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators’ model hate crimes, community relations and counterterrorism training program. In the 1990s he headed New Jersey’s bias crime office and developed specialized counterterrorism and SWAT training for many of New Jersey’s law enforcement agencies. He also was the chief investigative strategist for the U.S. Senate’s “Whitewater” investigation. Throughout the 1980s he served as a special agent in an undercover capacity as part of the elite South Florida Organized Crime Strike Force.
About National Public Safety Strategies
NPSS is a consortium specializing in domestic and international policy advisory and capacity building for national governments, nongovernmental organizations and private sector organizations. NPSS develops strategies for community problem solving, crime control and effective service delivery, and reviews the ways in which the public sector functions, with particular attention to policy, business practices and organizational culture.
About the Helsinki Commission
The Helsinki Commission is an independent U.S. Government agency that works with Congress in monitoring progress in the implementation of the provisions of the 1975 Helsinki Accords, and human rights in the OSCE region.
Further information about the Commission is available at www.csce.gov.
About the OSCE
The OSCE is a broad membership of 55 nations forming the world's largest regional security agency among nations, and is the only Eurasian security body in which all the states in the Euro-Atlantic region, Central Asia and the Caucasus sit at the same table as equal partners. The goal is to build overarching commitments on standards and values designed to prevent new divisions within Europe and beyond.
Further information about the OSCE may be obtained at www.osce.org.