When three University of Wisconsin Police sergeants created pamphlets in 1996 to help Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender students on campus cope with hate crimes, they never thought their product would win them international praise and be used by the FBI seven years later.
But on Oct. 25, Chief Susan Riseling, Sgt. Kurt Feavel, Sgt. Anita Kichefski and Sgt. Jerome Van Natta won the International Civil Rights Award, UW Police announced Monday.
The International Chief of Police Association presented the annual award in recognition of the pamphlets serving UW-Madison's LGBT community which branched into additional efforts to help minority students deal with harrassment.
The law enforcers' initial distribution of 500 hate crime pamphlets in 1996 has evolved into thousands per year. With this growth, these efforts have been picked up by numerous departments in Wisconsin and in the FBI, which now disseminates the pamphlets, according to Feavel.
\We wanted to create information that people would have that they can say 'OK, how does this apply to me?' and 'What is a hate crime?'"" Feavel said.
While the first pamphlets for LGBT students were mandated by then-UW-Madison Chancellor Donna Shalala, law enforcers developed the minority-targeted pamphlets as a response to racial profiling, which gained attention in 1999, Van Natta said. After Sept. 11, 2001, demand for the pamphlets about minority hate crimes skyrocketed.
""[Demand] really kind of depends on world events and a lot of times these [pamphlets] are generated by an actual incident and the need for them goes up at certain points,"" Van Netta said.
Van Netta pointed to the 1998 hate crime against homosexual Matthew Shepard that left Shepard dead as a time of increased demand for brochures from the LGBT community on campus.
Sara Hinkel, LGBT issues consultant to the Dean of Students office, said she thinks the value of the LGBT-targeted pamphlets lies in their ability to make LGBT students feel they have somewhere to go to discuss harassment.
""When I've taken those brochures to other campuses, they've been very impressed that not only did we have something like that, but that we also had something that our police department was providing to students,"" Hinkel said. ""[People] don't necessarily associate the police with being LGBT friendly.""
Both types of pamphlets can be obtained from the UW Police Department.
