How Massachusetts the Campus Police approved in 2025 to cope with hate crimes

Last year, a student at Berklee College of Music told a Jewish classmate that “Jews belong in the oven”. And at Smith College, a spray -painted Israeli flag was replaced on the campus with a swastika.

The incidents were both part of an increase in anti -Semitic incidents in Massachusetts, an increase that College Campus included.

While Campus is working on addressing anti -Semitism and other hate crimes better, College administrators and police officers from all over Massachusetts received a crash course for understanding trauma and how hatred by a program that was partly designed by the Massachusetts State Police.

The program lasted two days at the headquarters of the state police in Framingham last week.

For the Massachusetts Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators or Maclea, President Kerry Ramsdell, the head of the Endicott College police authority, the training could not have taken place at a better time.

“We saw a lot here in Massachusetts on our campus, and luckily we have already done a lot of training and examination and cooperation, but it is only so good that the program learns in an interview in an interview after the first of 10 modules and is expanded that the program will cover itself.

The state police designed the program with experts from the Miller Center for police work and resilience at Rutgers University and the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators.

On the first day of the program, numerous officials of the agencies who were responsible for the establishment of participants spoke to the participants, including the state police, Geoff Noble, and the district prosecutor of Middlesex, Marian Ryan.

“We are here to provide all resources we can have that we have,” said Noble the crowd.

“They are difficult days ahead of us,” said Ryan, adding that anti -Semitic incidents surpassed racial crimes in Massachusett's racial crimes last year. “But they have the privilege of working in a place where people are learned where they bring really great minds together.”

“As part of this institution, you can tackle these problems,” added Ryan.

The Executive Office for Public Security and Security of the State documented 466 hate crimes in Massachusetts last year, from 561 in the previous year. However, the incidents of religious prejudices rose at 153 in 2024.

Of the 153 incidents with religious distortions, 85% reflected the anti -Jewish bias according to the data of the state.

The anti-defamation league gave several Massachusetts Colleges a failing grade for their treatment of anti-Semitic incidents in 2023. In 2024, the organization increased the grades of the institutions, but had to do more work.

On Thursday, a large part of the first module under the direction of Robert Czespiel Jr., a former prosecutor in New Jersey, and Brian Christensen, a former investigator for Hass crimes, concentrated on the definition of trauma and hate crimes for around 100 participants.

Christensen and Czepiel emphasized that not all hate incidents rise to the level of a crime, especially in view of freedom of speech.

“If you have to do with hate crimes, you have to take this additional step,” said Christensen. “It is very difficult to prove a hate crime. One would have to prove that this person did it due to one of the protected characteristics.”

As an investigator, Christians preached proactively and tried to rise to the level of crime before hatred. He also emphasized how important it is to build relationships in the community, the Ramsdell, the Endicott boss, was one of the most important lessons that her department was under student protests in spring 2024 against war between Israel and Hamas.

There is a lot of work that a department can do before it reacts to an incident, she said.

“The structure of these trust factors and on the establishment of these relationships on our campus and outside … to support that if we react or have something, everything about this kind of cooperation would be a trained lesson,” said Ramsdell.

While Ramsdell recognized that it can be difficult to bring the students to the table, she said that it is an important part of the job to deal directly with them.

The law enforcement officers on campus are trained to meet and to interact with students from the first year in which they are on campus instead of waiting for them to come to the department.

“This is the unique part of our Campus Criminal Culture that we somehow do, but I think it still develops. It is not perfect and I don't think anyone has the perfect answer to it,” she said.

Police captain of Tufts University, Mark Roche, the organization's vice president, simply said that the standard was a person first.

“Give these relationships before the crisis so that you do not work to build these relationships and build this trust while there is a persistent crisis,” he said. “We are all just lifelong learners.”