The RI Commission on Prejudice and Bias (RI-CPB) is chaired by Norman Orodenker. The Commissions’ program adminstrator is Dr. Jodi Glass.

For the past 15 years, this program has been the sole source for hate crime trainings for law enforcement throughout the State. This includes recruits at the RI Municipal Police Training Academy, the Providence Police Training Academy, the State Police Training Academy and all local and university departments.

Our training team has been, and continues to be led by Tom Palombo, Assistant Attorney General. Representatives of the US Dept. of Justice as well as community speakers representing communities most often affected by hate crime are also involved in every training.

Funding for this project has been provided by the Rhode Island Justice Commission (RIJC) with JAG grant funds as recommended by the RIJC Law Enforcement Planning Committee and approved by the RIJC Policy Board.

With grant funding from the RI legislature the Hate Crime/Civil Rights Training and Education Program has been working in our schools. We work collaboratively with many community agencies including Youth Pride inc., RIJC, Lifespan and others, speaking out against bullying, homophobia, racism, sexism… With the endorsement of the Commissioner McWalters, we are now working directly with the cities of Providence, Central Falls, Woonsocket, Chariho and Pawtucket, with more to come. Jodi is pleased to co-chair these efforts with Colleen Rost-Banik. Colleen has recently moved to RI from Maine, where she worked with the Maine AG’s office to help create civil rights teams in schools throughout Maine. Our civil rights teams coordinator is Hannah Resseger. Fritz Harryson is our education consultant. Adding Fritz and Hannah to our team has been a tremendous boost to our work. Please watch this site for updates from Hannah.

A portion of our funding was used to create a video dealing with these topics. The Everett Dance Theatre was commissioned to create this video which will be released in the Spring of 2008. It will be an ever changing work, to keep things timely. It speaks directly to RI’ers, about RI youth and RI schools.

The RI Foundation has awarded the Hate Crime Training Program funding to improve our visibility and better share our work throughout the State. You may have seen our anti-hate billboard traveling through the State. This was created by a student at The Met School. We were honored to help in any way.

Our work with the Lifespan School to Career Program, Building Bridges, continues. This program offers the opportunity for youth from our inner cities to share experiences of living in the city and their perspectives and interactions with law enforcement, directly with officers. Building Bridges simply would not exist without the support of the State Police. Major Miech and Sargent Hill have personally made this happen.

Once a year we co-sponsor a conference/workshop with the RWU Justice System Training and Research Institute. Watch this site for further information about the Spring, 2008 workshop.

This is much of what we’re about, but there’s even more. We’d love to hear from you, with suggestions, volunteer time, concerns- whatever. That’s the only way we will make positive change happen!