Washington, U.S.A. – During a briefing with Congress on Attorney General Eric Holder’s Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence, Justice Department officials and task force co-chairs Joe Torre and Robert Listenbee, Jr. described their comprehensive work since the task force launch in October 2011 and discussed lessons learned through four public hearings held across the country over the last nine months.

The task force is a key part of Attorney General Holder’s Defending Childhood initiative to address children’s exposure to violence and will present policy recommendations in a final report to the Attorney General later this year.

At the briefing, Joe Torre, a Yankee legend, executive vice president of Major League Baseball and founder of the Joe Torre Safe At Home Foundation, described the impact of witnessing abuse as a child.

“It took decades before I finally started to talk about the violence in my childhood,” Torre said. “And as the task force has heard from one person after another, things haven’t changed enough.  Every child deserves a safe home, a safe school, and a safe community.”

The task force held four hearings from November 2011 to April 2012 in Baltimore, Albuquerque, N.M.,Miami and Detroit, and heard personal testimony from 65 people from 27 states and the District of Columbia. These included survivors of violence, young people, social service providers, medical personnel, researchers, practitioners, advocates, tribal and local officials, private foundation representatives, and community residents.

“Violence hurts children across the country—whether they live in urban, rural or tribal communities,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs Mary Lou Leary. “The Department of Justice is committed to reducing this impact and identifying concrete ways to make our children and our communities safer.”

The task force is composed of 13 leading experts, including practitioners, child and family advocates, academicians and licensed clinicians.

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Washington, U.S.A. — Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA), the senior Democratic appropriator for the U.S. Department of Justice, issued the following statement:

“Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice have achieved a major victory today in the on-going effort to hold predatory home mortgage lenders accountable. And the battle to right the wrongs of this national disgrace will continue.

“The $175 million settlement with Wells Fargo, one of the nation’s largest lenders, is an indication that aggressive investigation can result in justice for those victimized by patterns of discrimination on the basis of race or national origin.

“While instances of severe racial profiling and discrimination in home mortgage lending, predatory practices, misleading paperwork and hard-sell for sub-prime mortgages extend back at least to 2004, serious investigation of these allegations didn’t begin until after the Obama Administration took office in 2009.

“The Department of Justice under General Holder has confronted the mortgage foreclosure atrocity with every resource available – negotiating settlements with banks, investigating deceptive practices, and more.

“I have been urging the Department of Justice since 2009 to step up the pace of investigations, and led the fight in the House Appropriations Committee for the extra resources that have helped fund these probes.

“In addition, as a legislator who has won enactment for programs to assist distressed homeowners on the state and national level going back to the 1980s in Pennsylvania, I’m gratified that today’s beneficiaries include about 1,030 African-American homebuyers in the Philadelphia area who may have been victims of illegal predatory lending.

“And knowing General Holder as a man of character and action, I take heart that today’s settlement is simply the latest step by the professionals of the Department of Justice to protect and deliver redress for millions of preyed-upon, discriminated-against homeowners.”

Congressman Fattah is author of the Pennsylvania Homeowners Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program which has helped save over 44,000 homes from foreclosure by providing loans to homeowners who lost their jobs or income through no fault of their own.

He delivered programs including the $1 billion national Emergency Homeowners’ Loan Program which has saved homes for laid-off homeowners coast to coast. Fattah is the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and related agencies.

Image Courtesy of   USDAgov

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The Florida branches of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) held a press conference on July 11 to condemn anti-terrorism training conducted and the anti-terrorism training manual, A Law Enforcement Guide to Understanding Islamist Terrorism, by Sam Khabora, as “factually erroneous and biased.”

The Tampa CAIR’s press conference – presented by Director Hassan Shibly- not only announced its rejection of Khabora’s statements and training but also stated that it has sent its concerns in a letter to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE).

According to Shibly, trainings like Kharoba’s “makes our country less safe and less free.” Shibly went on to elaborate that the training makes us less free because it wastes police resources and time on training that is inaccurate, and that it makes Americans less free because it encourages the persecution of religion.

CAIR’s first concern was that Kharoba is not qualified to speak on the topic of Islam. Kharoba ‘s certifcation in the area of Islamic culture comes from an “Advanced Level General Certificate of Education in Arabic Culture” in the United Kingdom, which CAIR claims is the equivalent of an AP course in high school.

Additionally, CAIR pointed out at their press conference that much of the Islamic community in the United States is not of Arab descent. In fact, according to the US Department of State statistics in 2010 the majority of Arab Americans (two thirds) are Christian and the majority (up to one third) of Muslims in the United States are African-Americans.

Kharoba’s other claim to authority is that he lived in the Middle East for seventeen years. Shibly stated that letting Kharoba teach police based on this argument is like claiming that “any person who lives in America is qualified to talk about American history and Christianity in America.” In the letter to the FDLE, CAIR states, “Kharoba has neither the academic nor the operational background to qualify as a subject matter expert on either Islam or countering violent extremism.”

CAIR also cites other organizations, news agencies, and government officials who have rejected Kharoba’s training as biased and incorrect. The Washington Monthly March/April 2011 edition reported on Kharoba’s training in an article entitled “How We Train Our Cops to Fear Islam.”

The article clearly states several instances in which Kharoba makes sweeping generalizations about Islamic culture and Muslims including claiming that the Prophet Muhammad was a rapist, Islam is not a religion of peace, corner stores owned by Muslims are a way for Hezbollah to launder money, and wearing a headband is a sign of a martyr. According to the article Kharoba advocates for “legal harassment” in which police officers should identify Muslims in their neighborhoods and keep track of what activities they do and which properties they own.

In a similar article published in June of 2011 by the Broward Bulldog Kharoba’s teachings were “equate[d] to ethnic and religious profiling.” The article goes on to state that the US Department of Justice “have rejected such techniques as unconstitutional and discriminatory.”

According to CAIR, the Chairman and Ranking member of the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder that first quotes Kharoba and states, “these comments [from Kharoba], of course, are neither factually accurate nor consistent with our nation’s fundamental values and are not made by adequately trained personnel. It appears, however, that some of these so-called experts have neither the academic nor operational background in the material about which they train.”

An FDLE Spokesperson, Gretl Plessinger stated that the FDLE has received the letter and is reviewing the claims. She could not comment, yet, on how the FDLE will address the concerns as the facts and information must be re-examined. She also stated that Sam Kharoba is not certified as a trainer by the FDLE. Instead, he has been hired by individual training centers that the FDLE has certified. According to Plessinger, Kharoba has been used in the past as a counter-terrorism instructor and that they have received positive feedback from those who have taken the course.

CAIR also claims that the responses to the training law enforcement has received from Kharoba is “troubling.” One response that CAIR points out in particular is that an officer stated, “going to make sure we have completed surveys of existing ME/Muslim population and have a clearer understanding of their properties.”

Also speaking at the press conference was Bishop of the Apostolic Church and President of the Florida Council of Churches Chuck Leigh. Bishop Leigh castigated the training as “spending money on bigotry” that Kharoba’s alleged misrepresentations of Islam “offends the very heart of Christianity.” The Bishop went on to state, “I think God is offended by it.”

CAIR is the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the United States. Chapters of the non-profit organization can be found across the United States and work with local communities on education and outreach. Hassan Shibly, the Director of the Tampa CAIR chapter, stated that CAIR emphasizes preventative education because their philosophy is ignorance breeds hate.

CAIR also represents Muslims across the United States in discrimination cases and fights laws that are viewed as discriminatory toward the Islamic community. Currently there are about 40,000 Muslims who fall within the area of the Tampa CAIR chapter, and there are forty open cases of discrimination.

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