New ODIHR programme trains law enforcement officers in Bulgaria to combat hate crime

Five days of training for 48 Bulgarian police officers on dealing with hate crime concluded in Sofia on 30 March 2012. The course was part of Training against Hate Crimes for Law Enforcement (TAHCLE) – a new programme designed by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to improve police skills in recognizing, understanding and investigating hate crimes.

TAHCLE was launched officially a week earlier, at a 23 March event in Sofia.

During the course investigators, public order police officers, border police representatives and police academy trainers took part in exercises on exploring diversity within their own communities and evaluated case studies of responses to hate crimes by law enforcement officers. The participants will, in turn, provide the training to their colleagues over the next three months.

TAHCLE is based on the premise that dealing effectively with hate crimes involves police as proactive agents of change. It draws on the OSCE participating States’ experiences in confronting hate crimes and the achievements of law enforcement agencies in addressing the problem.

During the programme launch event, Veselin Vuchkov, the Deputy Interior Minister of Bulgaria, highlighted the importance of the course’s objectives and noted recent changes to the Bulgarian Criminal Code to include bias motivation as an aggravating circumstance for murder, bodily injury and property damage.

On 23 March 2012, TAHCLE was also presented to officers at the Croatian Police Academy in Zagreb, in co-operation with the Croatian Interior Ministry. The programme is the successor of the Law Enforcement Officer Programme, launched by ODIHR in 2005, which had already been implemented in Croatia.

TAHCLE is part of ODIHR's continued assistance to OSCE participating States in their efforts to build the capacity of law enforcement agencies in preventing and responding to hate crime.