May 21, 2023 • 26 mins
Dr. Matthew Schumacher is a clinical & operational psychologist with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Major Crimes Bureau. He also researches radicalization and threat assessment. Schumacher breaks down the hate crime threat in Southern California and summarizes the way he and others handle those traumatized by a hate incident or hate crime. He also talks about homegrown violent extremism.
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(00:05):
January thirtieth, nineteen thirty nine,during a two and a half hour speech,
German dictator Adolf Hitler tells a crowdof thousands that if another World War
were to break out, he predictedthe annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.
Eight months later, Germany invaded Polandand World War Two began, and
(00:30):
Hitler continued his genocide of the Jewsinside Germany itself. The Elizas is the
famous stadium of Nuremberg. On Mayeighth, nineteen forty five, the war
in Europe ended chapter of this famoussouthern German city. The American flag blouped
out the Swastika after the dust settled. It was estimated that more than six
(00:52):
million Jews died in the Holocaust,but what didn't die was anti Semitism.
In fact, it flourished throughout historyand today, almost eighty years later,
anti Semitism has evolved and become evenmore dangerous, largely due to technology.
If Adolf Hitler had an Instagram account, the Holocaust would have happened a lot
quicker because the public would have beenconvinced a lot sooner. This is the
(01:21):
iHeartRadio original podcast Hate Modern Anti SemitismI'm investigative journalist Steve Gregory in Los Angeles.
Doctor Matthew Schumacher is a clinical andoperational psychologist with the Los Angeles County
Sheriff's Department's Major Crimes Bureau. Healso researches radicalization and threat assessment. I
(01:42):
asked him if extremism is a problemin southern California. The data absolutely tells
us that it's a big problem.Hate in particular, as opposed to radicalization
or extremist ideology is a local problem, right, so it happens on the
block, on the street, inthe neighborhood. I think that we're much
(02:07):
much more interested and much more awarethat this is out there as a result
of George Floyd and some of theelements of the Asian American community in the
kind of China flu stuff. We'reaware and people have felt much more comfortable
speaking out about the bigotry and biasthat they're exposed to. And as a
result, we're asking a lot moreright, we're asking those questions and we're
(02:29):
having it reported to us, whichis one of the biggest advantages and new
things that we have going on.So, on the one hand, we're
going to see numbers go up becausewe're asking the question, we're asking it
to be reported. I don't thinkthere's an expert in the United States right
now that doesn't think we're on andat a high point upward slope, you
know what I mean. Perhaps notunlike other times we've had, you know,
(02:51):
racial and ethnic and cultural conflict inAmerica, but we're definitely at a
high point. And the real question, though, is how does that look
to the person on the streets that'sexperiencing it, and how does that play
out in our own response of fear. These groups that they're mostly looking to
have outsized influence, which is oneelement of say terrorism and influence. But
(03:15):
what they're trying to do is scarepeople. So it doesn't matter how many
people get hurt, even if theywere to do a violent attack, It
matters how many people are watching.One of the problems with our media cycle
and with the Internet is that everybodygets to see it, right, and
so their influence as far as people, but being aware of these hate hate
based ideologies in these groups is verydramatically enhanced and all you have to do.
(03:38):
Most of these are following like theal Qaeda Isis playbook right. They're
recruiting online, they're talking online,they're disseminating their bilge and hate online,
and most of it is not illegal. You said that groups like the GDL
and other groups, local groups likethis, they don't scare you. What
(04:00):
groups scare you. The groups thatscare me. And I mean this is
another element of our community in LAare the ones like the very old and
very prominent right wing militant groups outof Orange County. We have some of
that as far as I can tellup in the northern part of LA County.
But these folks travel now, right, So Charlottesville was one of the
(04:23):
first eye opening things. These guysare not anymore just saying hey, you
know Santa Monica Pier right, orsome sort of rally in Long Beach.
They're not even your kind of whitesupremist type gangs that do the concerts out
in the Inland Empire, right.These are folks that are going to travel
to where the action is, towhere they can have the most influence,
(04:45):
and that would be Charlottesville, orthat would be the Unite the Right rally,
or that would be you know.But all of this is very highly
choreographed. It is very much intendedto scare us and it works, which
is part of the problem. Youknow, you have an impressive background with
military intelligence. You've got you havesecurity clearances of some of the highest levels.
You served overseas, You've seen alot of action as both a veteran
(05:12):
military veteran and a psychologist. Butwhen you're back here in the States and
then you know you're kind of downhere in southern California, is there the
same intensity with extremism in southern Californiathat you've experienced overseas or that you've experienced
on a natural, national, federallevel or assignment that way. I mean,
it's an interesting question because, asyou noted, I mean, I've
(05:33):
been to Somalia, I've been tomultiple different places in Afghanistan and even Iraq
and Kurdistan, right and most ofthose places where they're actually an armed conflict,
they sort of organize around the ideology, but what's underneath it is either
crime, you know, profit orpower right there. They're like kind of
(05:54):
a little local tribal skirmishes, ifthat makes sense. So whatever ideology they
wrap it up in at the timeis you know, potentially not relevant or
not as relevant as it is herewhere it's very much identity politics. Right,
It's we are like, let's sayWhite Lives Matter, right, this
(06:14):
is very local. This is tocounter the influence of Black Lives Matter,
and it's a conflict of ideas thatmakes sense, just like you know,
GDL is sort of saying that,you know, all the bad stereotypical stuff
about the Jewish community, they're tryingto get their disinformation and their hate stuff
out to counter the influence of anothergroup that has a different kind of influence,
(06:35):
done a different way. Does thatmake sense? So the violence itself,
I would say in LA, atleast as far as the everyday stuff.
If I looked at probably ninety percentor more of the hate incidents and
hate crimes in LA, it's probablymore like get off my lawn, you
know what I mean. It's likesomebody that's scott brown skin move next to
somebody with black skin or white skin, or and they're stepping on each other's
(06:58):
toes, you know what I mean. Someone's had too much to dre someone's
homeless, someone's in my way.We had the more the more flamboyant incidents
where someone goes out of their wayto target somebody you know, you see
those on TV. Somebody breaks intoa mosque, somebody breaks into a temple.
Right, those are very those arepretty rare. What's not at all
rare is you know, somebody usesthe N word and gets in a fight
(07:21):
with somebody. Right. So,the more targeted, what we would call
predatory violence, which is what shouldscare us, is not super common.
The more reactive stuff that you know, is kind of bread and butter for
patrol cops. You know, someone'shaving a fight, someone's got mental illness,
someone's on drugs or intoxicated. Itjust adds that extra element for folks
(07:44):
that can make it either traumatic orfrightening, right, which is that they
don't like, they mean, theyhate who I am, right, or
at least that's the way it appearswhen these things happen. If that kind
of makes sense in your experience,then, Matthew, this extremism, in
this hate, it seems like it'sit's generational, that it's handed down.
(08:05):
Do you have you experienced that wherewhen you're talking about these extremist groups that
you say aren't down in deep downin Orange County and in North n La
County, and then they travel around, are they handing down their hate and
extremism to the next generation or isthis learned response. I think that they
(08:26):
are. You know, parents willpass their biggotry on the kids and things
of that nature. I think thatwhat's new now is that people are reaching
out to find similar others on theInternet, and so it doesn't have to
come from your family. If youlook at stuff like by Kathleen Blue at
the University of Chicago now Northwestern,she talks about the history of the Klu
Klux Klan, and that's very muchintergenerational, that gets into the roots in
(08:48):
the Deep South and all that kindof stuff. I don't doubt that we
have that here all right, ButI think we also have more superficial I
mean, the one that jumps outin LA would be that, you know,
the African community in the Korean communityhave a history of conflict, right,
very different cultures often inhabiting the sameplace. And then our history with
the Rodney King and then the riotsthat happened after that. There's some animus
(09:11):
between those two groups, right,That's just an example. I don't think
it's any any worse of an animusthan anywhere else, right, but human,
it's human nature to have some bias. It's unfortunately a little bit of
human nature to potentially harbor some moredeep seated bias depending on where we come
from. I don't you know,I don't know that I'm seeing um.
(09:31):
I'm not seeing that as the problem, right, I'm actually seeing it much
more as disaffected usually young men whoare actually looking for something to belong to.
They're looking for an identity. Whenthey find the Proud Boys, or
they find the Oath Keepers, orthey found white find white lives matter,
what they're finding is a group thatgives them a lot of the same sense
(09:52):
of belonging in identity and acceptance thatsay, military, law enforcement, you
know, or other things would givethem. Unfortunately, those groups identify with
hating something, right, it's sortof a negative identity. It's not that
we are you know what white ChristianChauvinists or whatever some of these folks say.
It's that we're against the great replacementtheory. We're against minorities taking over
(10:18):
when we hate the Jewish people orwe hate the black community. Right.
So they're making it a part oftheir identity that they want to be against
this thing, Whereas a more healthy, more developmentally sound approach would be to
develop your sense of yourself, yourpositives, your strengths. That's not how
these groups are really coming together.They're coming together and saying we're going to
(10:41):
fight against X. In your capacity, then, as a risk assessment professional,
as we sit here and talk aboutthis, you know, we're in
your office in an undisclosed location downtownLos Angeles, and as we sit here
and discuss this, and I knowyou're in a lot of very high level
meetings, are there any credible threatsin Southern California? Well, if we
(11:07):
go, if we go to thelevel of you know, kind of national
threats, I mean, we alljust saw what happened. I mean,
our infrastructure is at risk nationwide.And the problem with the threat atmosphere and
environment right now is that you don'tpeople don't need to just walk to where
they want to be involved in theirthreat. Right. I'll give you two
(11:28):
examples, right. The first onewas that the truckers from Canada came right
back down here through the Super Bowl. That's got nothing to do without the
Southern California except that the super Bowlwas here when they were traveling, and
they tried to make use of thatvenue. Similarly, we are a state
that is not going to have anyrestrictions on abortion or any changes to that
(11:50):
law. And in the Sheriff andthe Department is very clear that we will
do everything that we can to protectpeople that are using women's in reproductive health
care and that we will prosecute peoplefor targeting those folks if they are going
to show up with those places andviola people's rights. All right, So
that human right to see a doctorto get um prenatal perinatal women's healthcare,
(12:15):
that's not an issue here, right, But we still had violent protests in
downtown LA around them around the ROVERSUSWay decision, both the leak and the
decision, right right, So thosepeople weren't necessarily reacting to what's going on
here. We were reacting to anational issue. So we're and I think
by virtue of us being the secondlargest city in America and everything we do
(12:37):
here's high profile. So the riskis sort of self imposed almost. It's
like we're we're at risk constantly becauseof who we are, where we live.
So this is a yes but answer, right, yes, but how
many major terrorist attacks have we hadhere? Right? Yeah? Yeah,
we had we had the San Bernardino, which was very unique. Um.
(13:01):
And in a way we had uma kind of thwarted attack at at Lax
very shortly after nine to eleven.And then for the most part, what
we've had is more like your massshootings and you know, your suicides and
those kinds of things. Right.So, UM, I don't you know,
if if I look nationally, UM, I don't think we're high on
the list of foreign terrorist organizations,right. UM. If we look locally,
(13:26):
UM, we didn't have that much. We haven't had that much of
that, and we didn't have thatmuch relatively. We certainly didn't have a
Seattle problem, a Portland problem.Um. You know, those are not
um like sort of the Antifa orthe the ecologically oriented folks that get to
be sort of extreme. They're notas much oriented towards race and identity.
(13:46):
UM. So it's a different questionin some ways. But we we did
okay, you know, we hadreally a really bad um riot. Um.
Yeah, And I think that thathas a whole different set of cultural
permanent and explanations. I don't thinkthat's extremism or hate. Talk about when
you meet a victim of a hatecrime and whether it's someone that's in the
(14:11):
department, a law enforcement person,or the victim of hate crime. How
do you approach that person? Howdo you talk to that person through their
experience? Well, there's two answersto that question. One is sort of
rolling up recently after it's occurred,right, And there's another answer for people
(14:33):
that have, you know, kindof developed post traumatic stress or psychiatric struggles,
or even moral injury, you know, down the line. I certainly
have worked with a lot of peoplemilitary and others that have that, but
I'm probably not the right expert totalk to about the long term how do
you get better from this? Butthe short term responding to it, Almost
(14:54):
everybody that I've ever talked to that'sbeen through something like this, especially here
in America, had this kind ofI didn't think it could happen to me,
Right, there's a sort of shock. The African American community, for
sure, seems to be a littledifferent in that regard. They're not usually
quite as surprised, but there's alot of surprise. And again we're sort
of talking about individual stories. I'mnot really going data here, I'm going
(15:16):
what I've seen people become. Peopleare really shocked. It really upsets their
sense of how the world is andhow it works, that somebody is targeting
them because of something they can't changeabout themselves, right, Race Creed Color.
I think that that's the initial piece. Right. So usually these events
(15:37):
are at least traumatic in the sensethat somebody's broken your bubble of safety,
somebody hates you for no reason otherthan that you're walking and talking into breathing
air and attributes you really can't controlabout yourself. And this is America,
right, and we're not supposed tobe that way. The reality of the
world is unfortunately historically very different thanthat, right, Even the reality of
(16:00):
more in Europe in the last hundredyears is very different than that. But
that kind of thing, when itpops into your face and assaults you,
I would call that a kind ofidentity trauma. Right. So there's physical
trauma, like someone's actually hurt you, right, and that's you know,
going to the doctor, life limb, eyesight, and we of course handle
(16:22):
those things in the initial aftermath.And then there's a sort of psyche based
trauma, right, And usually we'refocused on like PTSD, right, nightmares,
flashbacks, things that we know arenot normal functioning for people. And
that's kind of the psychobiological element ofthat trauma. But then there's the damage
you know, to your sort ofpsyche or spirit. It can kind of
(16:45):
shatter your understanding of the world.Right, but you're safe. Somebody's targeting
you just because of who you are, your identity. So there's a lot
of that that happens, a lotof shock, and then it can be
hard for folks to re establish insense of safety because even though you made
it ten or twenty or thirty yearswalking around on this earth and nobody had
ever said, you know, you'reX, it happens and it really upsets
(17:11):
the ALPLA card. So that's kindof the initial stuff is to we do
a lot of what we call psychologicalfirst aid. We do a lot of
you know, listening but not pressingpeople to talk. We do a lot
of being forward, available in present, and a lot of connecting with resources
and community because we're really our firstpriority is to try to re establish that
sense that folks are safe. Whydoes hate exist? You know, I
(17:38):
actually spent most of my career researchingsuicide and then looked at which is actually
a form of self hate, right, And then I looked a lot for
a long time at radicalization and terror, and there's all this stuff written about
it, and go find me areally good book on the psychology of hate.
Doesn't exist slots on racism. There'sloss on bio. But like,
(18:00):
inside of us, why do wehate? Here's my best guess. You
know, one hundred thousand years ago, when we were still in little tribes,
it was probably adaptive to be worriedabout that other tribe coming over the
hill and taking you know, yourwomen, your territory, your food.
Right, these were survival things.So if someone was in your tribe and
(18:23):
you identified with them, these peopleare me, right, this group is
me. That group over there isother than me, and it's a threat.
The unfortunate truth is our brains haven'tchanged that much in the last one
hundred thousand years, and so thissort of deep sense of what's me versus
what's other. People in the sortof the di community and people in the
(18:45):
anti racism and will talk a lotabout the fact that this is an other
ring experience. Right. I'm anAmerican, I'm a you know, I'm
a cop, I'm a firefighter,and this person has just singled me out
as being other than it's very upsetting, right, but it's probably partly built
into who we are, and it'ssomething that we have to learn. We
(19:06):
have to learn to hate, likewhat to hate, who to hate,
why to hate, but at somelevel to be a little bit worried about
other groups of people encroaching on ouryou know, survival can kind of be
made sense of. Matthew, Um, can you explain to us the difference
between a hate crime and a hateincident. Sure, there's a there's obviously
(19:27):
law on what constitutes a hate crime, and you know we've already talked a
little bit about that. The incident, right is very much more vague.
Right, So the incident by definitionis not a crime. Hate incident is
when somebody is targeted, again,just like a hate crime, targeted because
(19:49):
of race, culture, creed,gender, sexuality, any of those things.
There's even you could even have ahate incident towards a veteran, all
right. The sident is an aggressionusually you know, verbal, or or
some sort of bias or discrimination thatis performed solely on the basis of that
(20:10):
individual difference that we just talked about. The problem is that a lot of
um, hate crimes, Like sosomeone vandalizes a building, but they do
it with a swastika, right,Well, we kind of have the sense
that that's hate and an anti semitsemitically based right, But there's not really
(20:30):
a victim, right, there's noperson. And then of course if they
do it, you know in away that we can kind of rub that
graffiti off and there's no evidence ofwho did it, there's no way for
us to pursue the hate crime,okay, But what there is is the
ability for us to respond to that, say shool or synagogue and say,
wow, is this something that happensa lot here, right? Or how
(20:53):
are you doing? You know whatI mean? Do you are you plugged
into the resources like the Jewish Federationand Ada and the community. Do you
know how to protect yourself? Doyou have trauma? Right? Or is
there a conflict here? So we'rekind of hoping to operate on the idea
that where there's smoke, there maybe fire, and that if there is
a bigger issue, again, itcomes back down to community trust. Right.
(21:15):
We've got a lot of you know, unique inniverse communities here that may
not be so thrilled about telling lawenforcement well, yeah, actually this is
a really hot spot for a lotof bias, and unfortunately there's crime all
the time, but I don't wantto tell you about it. Okay,
Yeah, you know it. You'retalking about vandalism because everyone thinks that that
is a victims crime because there's noindividual era that's it's it's a building,
(21:37):
it's a nanimate object. But sopart of what you're doing in your contributions
to the Sheriff's Department here and whatyou do with your unit are the task
force here, is that you areyou would be digging deeper into that and
actually going to find the origin ofthat. Yeah, we want to and
then stop it, make it stop, we both, okay. So I
(22:00):
mean, obviously one of the thingsthat we really like about this approach is
that everybody wants to be protected inthese circumstances, and if there's not a
crime, it's hard for us tobe there. Right. This gives us
a little bit more of a reasonto be there with both you know,
community psychology and connection to ELI byHate and ADL and other groups that can
(22:21):
provide resources, but it also givesus a reason to help understand how it's
impacting the community. Right, Soyou know, we have our patrol stations
and they're going to do their jobright. They're going to catch bad guys
and they're going to investigate, andthey have their station detectives and that's their
job. We also have DMH startand on our side of the fens here
MET and LAPD's got their version oftheir mental health team. And if the
(22:45):
person that you know was either sorry, if the person that had done the
crime so to speak, or donethe hate incident is mentally ill otherwise needs
medical help or care, that's what'sdriving the incident, they'll handle that.
What we want to do is comeand see what is going on with the
community. How is this affecting you? Right? Are you plugged into the
resources that we have here. Areyou feeling like the department is responding to
(23:10):
you and understanding the nature or youfeel like you're howling into the wind.
Right you're saying, this is happeningall the time and no one's doing anything.
Well, sometimes that barrier of theirnot being a crime or not being
a clear victim or not being aclear perpetrator makes it hard for the law
enforcement to do something. So we'regoing to try to fix that, right,
We're going to try to do somethingthat that basically involves community policing and
(23:34):
meeting the community's need around these verytraumatic events because prosecutors are having you know,
I know, prosecutors are faced withthe challenge of it escalating to charging
a crime because they're having a toughtime crossing that line between incident in a
(23:56):
crime and sure in finding the perpetratorof the crime, you know, because
what was someone's intent. It's beenvery complicated and convoluted. Well, let
me put it to you this way. This is the way I would the
way I would respond to that isthat we want to make this really really
simple. Okay, if you oryour community have been the victim of an
incident that is racially ethnically motivated inany of those ways, we want you
(24:21):
to know that we want to help, right, And so while the prosecutor
is going to have the hard timemaking that case that you know what,
the hate crime is actually just anenhancement, right, So we have to
get the crime in the first place. It's been escalated from the incident probably
anyway. Yes, So, youknow, it's very challenging because there's all
(24:42):
these crimes and like the murder orthe vandalism or the assault. That's what's
going to get the person put awayin jail for a very long time.
The hate piece feels validating the community, but doesn't necessarily always add that much,
you know what I mean, Andit can be a much harder standard
for the prosecutor to make so rightly, I mean, they're they're usually focused
(25:02):
on how am I going to getthis person, you know the most justice?
Right, They're not They're not alwaysable to look at that in the
same way. Well, we wantto do is say, well, it
doesn't really matter to us. Youwere experience, You experienced a hate incident,
and we want to respond to that, right. We want to respond
with care, We want to bepresent. We want to help you as
a community adjust to this. Youknow, whether it's you know, someone
(25:26):
used to slur and try to swingat you and there's no no real they're
there, or whether it's like amore you know, like the Colodado Springs
attack or um some of the otherones that we've seen, um Tree of
Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, right,or the Poway you know, so it
can run that whole gamut, right, But what we want is to partner
(25:48):
with the community and let's let's behonest. Part of what we want to
do is listen because we don't knowwhat's always going on at this level.
We haven't always been, you know, reacting or responding to every incidents.
But we need people to tell us. We need to know, we need
to come. I think you knowmy stance as we show up and we
say where does it hurt and howcan I help? And let's be honest,
(26:11):
it's been a bumpy couple of yearsfor law enforcement and that is not
really what most people think. We'rethere to do, is to ask how
can we help what hurts? ButI would differ with that. I think
most departments, especially this one,that's what we're here to do. Hate
Modern Anti Semitism is a production ofthe KFI News Department for iHeartMedia Los Angeles
(26:36):
and the iHeart podcast Network. Theprogram is produced by Steve Gregory and Jacob
Gonzalez. To learn more about antisemitism and how you can join the conversation,
go to translate hate dot org.That's translate hate dot Org.
January thirtieth, nineteen thirty nine,during a two and a half hour speech,
German dictator Adolf Hitler tells a crowdof thousands that if another World War
were to break out, he predictedthe annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.
Eight months later, Germany invaded Polandand World War Two began, and
(00:30):
Hitler continued his genocide of the Jewsinside Germany itself. The Elizas is the
famous stadium of Nuremberg. On Mayeighth, nineteen forty five, the war
in Europe ended chapter of this famoussouthern German city. The American flag blouped
out the Swastika after the dust settled. It was estimated that more than six
(00:52):
million Jews died in the Holocaust,but what didn't die was anti Semitism.
In fact, it flourished throughout historyand today, almost eighty years later,
anti Semitism has evolved and become evenmore dangerous, largely due to technology.
If Adolf Hitler had an Instagram account, the Holocaust would have happened a lot
quicker because the public would have beenconvinced a lot sooner. This is the
(01:21):
iHeartRadio original podcast Hate Modern Anti SemitismI'm investigative journalist Steve Gregory in Los Angeles.
Doctor Matthew Schumacher is a clinical andoperational psychologist with the Los Angeles County
Sheriff's Department's Major Crimes Bureau. Healso researches radicalization and threat assessment. I
(01:42):
asked him if extremism is a problemin southern California. The data absolutely tells
us that it's a big problem.Hate in particular, as opposed to radicalization
or extremist ideology is a local problem, right, so it happens on the
block, on the street, inthe neighborhood. I think that we're much
(02:07):
much more interested and much more awarethat this is out there as a result
of George Floyd and some of theelements of the Asian American community in the
kind of China flu stuff. We'reaware and people have felt much more comfortable
speaking out about the bigotry and biasthat they're exposed to. And as a
result, we're asking a lot moreright, we're asking those questions and we're
(02:29):
having it reported to us, whichis one of the biggest advantages and new
things that we have going on.So, on the one hand, we're
going to see numbers go up becausewe're asking the question, we're asking it
to be reported. I don't thinkthere's an expert in the United States right
now that doesn't think we're on andat a high point upward slope, you
know what I mean. Perhaps notunlike other times we've had, you know,
(02:51):
racial and ethnic and cultural conflict inAmerica, but we're definitely at a
high point. And the real question, though, is how does that look
to the person on the streets that'sexperiencing it, and how does that play
out in our own response of fear. These groups that they're mostly looking to
have outsized influence, which is oneelement of say terrorism and influence. But
(03:15):
what they're trying to do is scarepeople. So it doesn't matter how many
people get hurt, even if theywere to do a violent attack, It
matters how many people are watching.One of the problems with our media cycle
and with the Internet is that everybodygets to see it, right, and
so their influence as far as people, but being aware of these hate hate
based ideologies in these groups is verydramatically enhanced and all you have to do.
(03:38):
Most of these are following like theal Qaeda Isis playbook right. They're
recruiting online, they're talking online,they're disseminating their bilge and hate online,
and most of it is not illegal. You said that groups like the GDL
and other groups, local groups likethis, they don't scare you. What
(04:00):
groups scare you. The groups thatscare me. And I mean this is
another element of our community in LAare the ones like the very old and
very prominent right wing militant groups outof Orange County. We have some of
that as far as I can tellup in the northern part of LA County.
But these folks travel now, right, So Charlottesville was one of the
(04:23):
first eye opening things. These guysare not anymore just saying hey, you
know Santa Monica Pier right, orsome sort of rally in Long Beach.
They're not even your kind of whitesupremist type gangs that do the concerts out
in the Inland Empire, right.These are folks that are going to travel
to where the action is, towhere they can have the most influence,
(04:45):
and that would be Charlottesville, orthat would be the Unite the Right rally,
or that would be you know.But all of this is very highly
choreographed. It is very much intendedto scare us and it works, which
is part of the problem. Youknow, you have an impressive background with
military intelligence. You've got you havesecurity clearances of some of the highest levels.
You served overseas, You've seen alot of action as both a veteran
(05:12):
military veteran and a psychologist. Butwhen you're back here in the States and
then you know you're kind of downhere in southern California, is there the
same intensity with extremism in southern Californiathat you've experienced overseas or that you've experienced
on a natural, national, federallevel or assignment that way. I mean,
it's an interesting question because, asyou noted, I mean, I've
(05:33):
been to Somalia, I've been tomultiple different places in Afghanistan and even Iraq
and Kurdistan, right and most ofthose places where they're actually an armed conflict,
they sort of organize around the ideology, but what's underneath it is either
crime, you know, profit orpower right there. They're like kind of
(05:54):
a little local tribal skirmishes, ifthat makes sense. So whatever ideology they
wrap it up in at the timeis you know, potentially not relevant or
not as relevant as it is herewhere it's very much identity politics. Right,
It's we are like, let's sayWhite Lives Matter, right, this
(06:14):
is very local. This is tocounter the influence of Black Lives Matter,
and it's a conflict of ideas thatmakes sense, just like you know,
GDL is sort of saying that,you know, all the bad stereotypical stuff
about the Jewish community, they're tryingto get their disinformation and their hate stuff
out to counter the influence of anothergroup that has a different kind of influence,
(06:35):
done a different way. Does thatmake sense? So the violence itself,
I would say in LA, atleast as far as the everyday stuff.
If I looked at probably ninety percentor more of the hate incidents and
hate crimes in LA, it's probablymore like get off my lawn, you
know what I mean. It's likesomebody that's scott brown skin move next to
somebody with black skin or white skin, or and they're stepping on each other's
(06:58):
toes, you know what I mean. Someone's had too much to dre someone's
homeless, someone's in my way.We had the more the more flamboyant incidents
where someone goes out of their wayto target somebody you know, you see
those on TV. Somebody breaks intoa mosque, somebody breaks into a temple.
Right, those are very those arepretty rare. What's not at all
rare is you know, somebody usesthe N word and gets in a fight
(07:21):
with somebody. Right. So,the more targeted, what we would call
predatory violence, which is what shouldscare us, is not super common.
The more reactive stuff that you know, is kind of bread and butter for
patrol cops. You know, someone'shaving a fight, someone's got mental illness,
someone's on drugs or intoxicated. Itjust adds that extra element for folks
(07:44):
that can make it either traumatic orfrightening, right, which is that they
don't like, they mean, theyhate who I am, right, or
at least that's the way it appearswhen these things happen. If that kind
of makes sense in your experience,then, Matthew, this extremism, in
this hate, it seems like it'sit's generational, that it's handed down.
(08:05):
Do you have you experienced that wherewhen you're talking about these extremist groups that
you say aren't down in deep downin Orange County and in North n La
County, and then they travel around, are they handing down their hate and
extremism to the next generation or isthis learned response. I think that they
(08:26):
are. You know, parents willpass their biggotry on the kids and things
of that nature. I think thatwhat's new now is that people are reaching
out to find similar others on theInternet, and so it doesn't have to
come from your family. If youlook at stuff like by Kathleen Blue at
the University of Chicago now Northwestern,she talks about the history of the Klu
Klux Klan, and that's very muchintergenerational, that gets into the roots in
(08:48):
the Deep South and all that kindof stuff. I don't doubt that we
have that here all right, ButI think we also have more superficial I
mean, the one that jumps outin LA would be that, you know,
the African community in the Korean communityhave a history of conflict, right,
very different cultures often inhabiting the sameplace. And then our history with
the Rodney King and then the riotsthat happened after that. There's some animus
(09:11):
between those two groups, right,That's just an example. I don't think
it's any any worse of an animusthan anywhere else, right, but human,
it's human nature to have some bias. It's unfortunately a little bit of
human nature to potentially harbor some moredeep seated bias depending on where we come
from. I don't you know,I don't know that I'm seeing um.
(09:31):
I'm not seeing that as the problem, right, I'm actually seeing it much
more as disaffected usually young men whoare actually looking for something to belong to.
They're looking for an identity. Whenthey find the Proud Boys, or
they find the Oath Keepers, orthey found white find white lives matter,
what they're finding is a group thatgives them a lot of the same sense
(09:52):
of belonging in identity and acceptance thatsay, military, law enforcement, you
know, or other things would givethem. Unfortunately, those groups identify with
hating something, right, it's sortof a negative identity. It's not that
we are you know what white ChristianChauvinists or whatever some of these folks say.
It's that we're against the great replacementtheory. We're against minorities taking over
(10:18):
when we hate the Jewish people orwe hate the black community. Right.
So they're making it a part oftheir identity that they want to be against
this thing, Whereas a more healthy, more developmentally sound approach would be to
develop your sense of yourself, yourpositives, your strengths. That's not how
these groups are really coming together.They're coming together and saying we're going to
(10:41):
fight against X. In your capacity, then, as a risk assessment professional,
as we sit here and talk aboutthis, you know, we're in
your office in an undisclosed location downtownLos Angeles, and as we sit here
and discuss this, and I knowyou're in a lot of very high level
meetings, are there any credible threatsin Southern California? Well, if we
(11:07):
go, if we go to thelevel of you know, kind of national
threats, I mean, we alljust saw what happened. I mean,
our infrastructure is at risk nationwide.And the problem with the threat atmosphere and
environment right now is that you don'tpeople don't need to just walk to where
they want to be involved in theirthreat. Right. I'll give you two
(11:28):
examples, right. The first onewas that the truckers from Canada came right
back down here through the Super Bowl. That's got nothing to do without the
Southern California except that the super Bowlwas here when they were traveling, and
they tried to make use of thatvenue. Similarly, we are a state
that is not going to have anyrestrictions on abortion or any changes to that
(11:50):
law. And in the Sheriff andthe Department is very clear that we will
do everything that we can to protectpeople that are using women's in reproductive health
care and that we will prosecute peoplefor targeting those folks if they are going
to show up with those places andviola people's rights. All right, So
that human right to see a doctorto get um prenatal perinatal women's healthcare,
(12:15):
that's not an issue here, right, But we still had violent protests in
downtown LA around them around the ROVERSUSWay decision, both the leak and the
decision, right right, So thosepeople weren't necessarily reacting to what's going on
here. We were reacting to anational issue. So we're and I think
by virtue of us being the secondlargest city in America and everything we do
(12:37):
here's high profile. So the riskis sort of self imposed almost. It's
like we're we're at risk constantly becauseof who we are, where we live.
So this is a yes but answer, right, yes, but how
many major terrorist attacks have we hadhere? Right? Yeah? Yeah,
we had we had the San Bernardino, which was very unique. Um.
(13:01):
And in a way we had uma kind of thwarted attack at at Lax
very shortly after nine to eleven.And then for the most part, what
we've had is more like your massshootings and you know, your suicides and
those kinds of things. Right.So, UM, I don't you know,
if if I look nationally, UM, I don't think we're high on
the list of foreign terrorist organizations,right. UM. If we look locally,
(13:26):
UM, we didn't have that much. We haven't had that much of
that, and we didn't have thatmuch relatively. We certainly didn't have a
Seattle problem, a Portland problem.Um. You know, those are not
um like sort of the Antifa orthe the ecologically oriented folks that get to
be sort of extreme. They're notas much oriented towards race and identity.
(13:46):
UM. So it's a different questionin some ways. But we we did
okay, you know, we hadreally a really bad um riot. Um.
Yeah, And I think that thathas a whole different set of cultural
permanent and explanations. I don't thinkthat's extremism or hate. Talk about when
you meet a victim of a hatecrime and whether it's someone that's in the
(14:11):
department, a law enforcement person,or the victim of hate crime. How
do you approach that person? Howdo you talk to that person through their
experience? Well, there's two answersto that question. One is sort of
rolling up recently after it's occurred,right, And there's another answer for people
(14:33):
that have, you know, kindof developed post traumatic stress or psychiatric struggles,
or even moral injury, you know, down the line. I certainly
have worked with a lot of peoplemilitary and others that have that, but
I'm probably not the right expert totalk to about the long term how do
you get better from this? Butthe short term responding to it, Almost
(14:54):
everybody that I've ever talked to that'sbeen through something like this, especially here
in America, had this kind ofI didn't think it could happen to me,
Right, there's a sort of shock. The African American community, for
sure, seems to be a littledifferent in that regard. They're not usually
quite as surprised, but there's alot of surprise. And again we're sort
of talking about individual stories. I'mnot really going data here, I'm going
(15:16):
what I've seen people become. Peopleare really shocked. It really upsets their
sense of how the world is andhow it works, that somebody is targeting
them because of something they can't changeabout themselves, right, Race Creed Color.
I think that that's the initial piece. Right. So usually these events
(15:37):
are at least traumatic in the sensethat somebody's broken your bubble of safety,
somebody hates you for no reason otherthan that you're walking and talking into breathing
air and attributes you really can't controlabout yourself. And this is America,
right, and we're not supposed tobe that way. The reality of the
world is unfortunately historically very different thanthat, right, Even the reality of
(16:00):
more in Europe in the last hundredyears is very different than that. But
that kind of thing, when itpops into your face and assaults you,
I would call that a kind ofidentity trauma. Right. So there's physical
trauma, like someone's actually hurt you, right, and that's you know,
going to the doctor, life limb, eyesight, and we of course handle
(16:22):
those things in the initial aftermath.And then there's a sort of psyche based
trauma, right, And usually we'refocused on like PTSD, right, nightmares,
flashbacks, things that we know arenot normal functioning for people. And
that's kind of the psychobiological element ofthat trauma. But then there's the damage
you know, to your sort ofpsyche or spirit. It can kind of
(16:45):
shatter your understanding of the world.Right, but you're safe. Somebody's targeting
you just because of who you are, your identity. So there's a lot
of that that happens, a lotof shock, and then it can be
hard for folks to re establish insense of safety because even though you made
it ten or twenty or thirty yearswalking around on this earth and nobody had
ever said, you know, you'reX, it happens and it really upsets
(17:11):
the ALPLA card. So that's kindof the initial stuff is to we do
a lot of what we call psychologicalfirst aid. We do a lot of
you know, listening but not pressingpeople to talk. We do a lot
of being forward, available in present, and a lot of connecting with resources
and community because we're really our firstpriority is to try to re establish that
sense that folks are safe. Whydoes hate exist? You know, I
(17:38):
actually spent most of my career researchingsuicide and then looked at which is actually
a form of self hate, right, And then I looked a lot for
a long time at radicalization and terror, and there's all this stuff written about
it, and go find me areally good book on the psychology of hate.
Doesn't exist slots on racism. There'sloss on bio. But like,
(18:00):
inside of us, why do wehate? Here's my best guess. You
know, one hundred thousand years ago, when we were still in little tribes,
it was probably adaptive to be worriedabout that other tribe coming over the
hill and taking you know, yourwomen, your territory, your food.
Right, these were survival things.So if someone was in your tribe and
(18:23):
you identified with them, these peopleare me, right, this group is
me. That group over there isother than me, and it's a threat.
The unfortunate truth is our brains haven'tchanged that much in the last one
hundred thousand years, and so thissort of deep sense of what's me versus
what's other. People in the sortof the di community and people in the
(18:45):
anti racism and will talk a lotabout the fact that this is an other
ring experience. Right. I'm anAmerican, I'm a you know, I'm
a cop, I'm a firefighter,and this person has just singled me out
as being other than it's very upsetting, right, but it's probably partly built
into who we are, and it'ssomething that we have to learn. We
(19:06):
have to learn to hate, likewhat to hate, who to hate,
why to hate, but at somelevel to be a little bit worried about
other groups of people encroaching on ouryou know, survival can kind of be
made sense of. Matthew, Um, can you explain to us the difference
between a hate crime and a hateincident. Sure, there's a there's obviously
(19:27):
law on what constitutes a hate crime, and you know we've already talked a
little bit about that. The incident, right is very much more vague.
Right, So the incident by definitionis not a crime. Hate incident is
when somebody is targeted, again,just like a hate crime, targeted because
(19:49):
of race, culture, creed,gender, sexuality, any of those things.
There's even you could even have ahate incident towards a veteran, all
right. The sident is an aggressionusually you know, verbal, or or
some sort of bias or discrimination thatis performed solely on the basis of that
(20:10):
individual difference that we just talked about. The problem is that a lot of
um, hate crimes, Like sosomeone vandalizes a building, but they do
it with a swastika, right,Well, we kind of have the sense
that that's hate and an anti semitsemitically based right, But there's not really
(20:30):
a victim, right, there's noperson. And then of course if they
do it, you know in away that we can kind of rub that
graffiti off and there's no evidence ofwho did it, there's no way for
us to pursue the hate crime,okay, But what there is is the
ability for us to respond to that, say shool or synagogue and say,
wow, is this something that happensa lot here, right? Or how
(20:53):
are you doing? You know whatI mean? Do you are you plugged
into the resources like the Jewish Federationand Ada and the community. Do you
know how to protect yourself? Doyou have trauma? Right? Or is
there a conflict here? So we'rekind of hoping to operate on the idea
that where there's smoke, there maybe fire, and that if there is
a bigger issue, again, itcomes back down to community trust. Right.
(21:15):
We've got a lot of you know, unique inniverse communities here that may
not be so thrilled about telling lawenforcement well, yeah, actually this is
a really hot spot for a lotof bias, and unfortunately there's crime all
the time, but I don't wantto tell you about it. Okay,
Yeah, you know it. You'retalking about vandalism because everyone thinks that that
is a victims crime because there's noindividual era that's it's it's a building,
(21:37):
it's a nanimate object. But sopart of what you're doing in your contributions
to the Sheriff's Department here and whatyou do with your unit are the task
force here, is that you areyou would be digging deeper into that and
actually going to find the origin ofthat. Yeah, we want to and
then stop it, make it stop, we both, okay. So I
(22:00):
mean, obviously one of the thingsthat we really like about this approach is
that everybody wants to be protected inthese circumstances, and if there's not a
crime, it's hard for us tobe there. Right. This gives us
a little bit more of a reasonto be there with both you know,
community psychology and connection to ELI byHate and ADL and other groups that can
(22:21):
provide resources, but it also givesus a reason to help understand how it's
impacting the community. Right, Soyou know, we have our patrol stations
and they're going to do their jobright. They're going to catch bad guys
and they're going to investigate, andthey have their station detectives and that's their
job. We also have DMH startand on our side of the fens here
MET and LAPD's got their version oftheir mental health team. And if the
(22:45):
person that you know was either sorry, if the person that had done the
crime so to speak, or donethe hate incident is mentally ill otherwise needs
medical help or care, that's what'sdriving the incident, they'll handle that.
What we want to do is comeand see what is going on with the
community. How is this affecting you? Right? Are you plugged into the
resources that we have here. Areyou feeling like the department is responding to
(23:10):
you and understanding the nature or youfeel like you're howling into the wind.
Right you're saying, this is happeningall the time and no one's doing anything.
Well, sometimes that barrier of theirnot being a crime or not being
a clear victim or not being aclear perpetrator makes it hard for the law
enforcement to do something. So we'regoing to try to fix that, right,
We're going to try to do somethingthat that basically involves community policing and
(23:34):
meeting the community's need around these verytraumatic events because prosecutors are having you know,
I know, prosecutors are faced withthe challenge of it escalating to charging
a crime because they're having a toughtime crossing that line between incident in a
(23:56):
crime and sure in finding the perpetratorof the crime, you know, because
what was someone's intent. It's beenvery complicated and convoluted. Well, let
me put it to you this way. This is the way I would the
way I would respond to that isthat we want to make this really really
simple. Okay, if you oryour community have been the victim of an
incident that is racially ethnically motivated inany of those ways, we want you
(24:21):
to know that we want to help, right, And so while the prosecutor
is going to have the hard timemaking that case that you know what,
the hate crime is actually just anenhancement, right, So we have to
get the crime in the first place. It's been escalated from the incident probably
anyway. Yes, So, youknow, it's very challenging because there's all
(24:42):
these crimes and like the murder orthe vandalism or the assault. That's what's
going to get the person put awayin jail for a very long time.
The hate piece feels validating the community, but doesn't necessarily always add that much,
you know what I mean, Andit can be a much harder standard
for the prosecutor to make so rightly, I mean, they're they're usually focused
(25:02):
on how am I going to getthis person, you know the most justice?
Right, They're not They're not alwaysable to look at that in the
same way. Well, we wantto do is say, well, it
doesn't really matter to us. Youwere experience, You experienced a hate incident,
and we want to respond to that, right. We want to respond
with care, We want to bepresent. We want to help you as
a community adjust to this. Youknow, whether it's you know, someone
(25:26):
used to slur and try to swingat you and there's no no real they're
there, or whether it's like amore you know, like the Colodado Springs
attack or um some of the otherones that we've seen, um Tree of
Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, right,or the Poway you know, so it
can run that whole gamut, right, But what we want is to partner
(25:48):
with the community and let's let's behonest. Part of what we want to
do is listen because we don't knowwhat's always going on at this level.
We haven't always been, you know, reacting or responding to every incidents.
But we need people to tell us. We need to know, we need
to come. I think you knowmy stance as we show up and we
say where does it hurt and howcan I help? And let's be honest,
(26:11):
it's been a bumpy couple of yearsfor law enforcement and that is not
really what most people think. We'rethere to do, is to ask how
can we help what hurts? ButI would differ with that. I think
most departments, especially this one,that's what we're here to do. Hate
Modern Anti Semitism is a production ofthe KFI News Department for iHeartMedia Los Angeles
(26:36):
and the iHeart podcast Network. Theprogram is produced by Steve Gregory and Jacob
Gonzalez. To learn more about antisemitism and how you can join the conversation,
go to translate hate dot org.That's translate hate dot Org.
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