New Jersey State Troopers Undergo Mandatory Islamic Sensitivity Training

That's a Big Fuck You, Over and Out

From North Jersey.com:

Questions about the veil and other facets of Islamic faith and culture are at the heart of the one-hour class, now a requirement for every New Jersey state trooper, that emerged from anxiety and acrimony following news last year that New York City detectives were spying on New Jersey Muslims. 

But is one hour of teaching, out of a solid week of police training, enough to markedly improve relations between police officers and wary Muslim communities across the state? Chaudry, president of the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge and a Rutgers professor, said it’s a start. 

One result of strong backlash to spying by the New York Police Department was the creation of the Muslim Outreach Committee, a group of about 20 Muslim leaders and top law-enforcement officials that began meeting a year ago. 

The training, which is included in classwork this week at the state criminal justice academy in Sea Girt, is one of several committee efforts aimed at building trust. “When we first started, there was anger and hostility,” said Imam Mustafa El-Amin, who heads the Masjid Ibrahim mosque in Newark. 

“Now it has actually developed to achievements and goals as opposed to just talking and airing out who’s guilty and who’s not.” Acting Attorney General John J. Hoffman said the training is helping to bridge the divide. 

“We don’t agree all the time on every issue, but we do agree we’ll talk about them, and that has gotten us miles ahead in the process,” he said. New state police recruits are attending the class through Oct. 11. Other recruits and veteran troopers will get the training by video as part of regular in-service training.   

In a recent class, a few officers stared at their cellphones while Chaudry was lecturing. Questions were encouraged, but only two out of about 120 people in the class asked any. Chaudry said it was a challenge to cover Islam in an hour and have time for questions. In his Rutgers class, he devotes 90 minutes just to talk about the term jihad, he said. “It’s not going to change everybody’s view, and it’s going to take a lot more than a one-hour lecture, but at least it’s a beginning,” he said.