Sheriff Morgan represents US sheriffs in standing against hate worldwide

Newport News Sheriff Gabe Morgan was in Krakow, Poland for the annual International March of the Living April 17-19.

With the Holocaust as its backdrop, representing the National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) and the more than 3,000 sheriffs across the country, Sheriff Morgan and other U.S. and European law enforcement executives signed and issued a declaration against all forms of hatred, anti-Semitism, discrimination, and extremism around the world.

Sheriff Morgan was among a select number of senior American law enforcement leaders brought together for the first time by The Miller Center on Policing and Community Resilience at Rutgers University.

He was one of the 10,000 people – Holocaust survivors, law enforcement executives, heads of state, government officials, students, and citizens – who walked the three-kilometer path leading from Auschwitz to Birkenau, former Nazi Concentration Camps where more than a million men, women and children were killed.

The journey was personal for Sheriff Morgan.

“Having been subjected to racism, having seen and dealt with the effect of hate crimes, it’s all personal. I served in Bosnia, and I will tell you that when you see the effects of ethnic cleansing or the attempt to wipe out someone because of their religious belief or ethnicity, that sticks with you. From a personal standpoint, there is no position or place in our society for hate. There is definitely no place in our society for biased action against someone because you don’t agree with them, don’t agree or like their gender, sexual orientation, color of their skin, or ethnicity. I went to Dachau when I served in Germany. I visited Auschwitz. It had a profound effect then. To go back and be part of this, it’s the right time for me to recommit myself to the work I’ve been doing all my life and more so now to preserve our way of life.”

The National Sheriffs’ Association is committed to the initiative aimed at stemming the tide of hate and extremism in any form.

“It has two parts. The first part is using the March of the Living as a backdrop. You think about what happened during the Holocaust and how the government used its forces, the police and military, to oppress its own people. The whole idea behind this is to make a statement that government should never do that. As members of law enforcement, we’re proclaiming that we are the vanguards, that we wouldn’t do that and don’t support government doing that by any means.

Secondly, The Miller Center will be developing an entire curriculum associated with hate. It is going to draw on world events to include the Holocaust and recent and current events, so the March is, if you will, the kickoff of bringing all that together. This training they’ll be putting together will be directed at law enforcement so that law enforcement can readily identify hate and how to address it and those kind of things.”

-Watch the reading of the Law Enforcement Declaration-

Sheriff Morgan said the timing is right for this effort, and he’s honored to be part of it.

“When you think about what’s going on in America today, the rise of hate against just about anybody that doesn’t look or act like you, doesn’t agree with you, you can see how this can quickly devolve into something similar.

Law enforcement has an obligation to learn from its past mistakes. Our country evolved out of a racist concept. When you think about law enforcement, it was to protect the community but it was used to exact slave patrols, returning of slaves, because that was profits, and the other was when law enforcement was used to exact Jim Crow laws, everyone remembers Bull Connors because that was televised, but there were literally thousands of Bull Connors throughout America. That was the face of law enforcement for many communities. We are still struggling to overcome it. That’s another reason why making this trip was important to me. I symbolize those who were on the receiving end to now being someone who is governing those who are charged with policing. For me, it’s a full circle. “

Miller Center officials recognize that modern policing services are taking on the role as agents of social change through their actions and innovative community policing efforts, adding that police are the visible extension of government’s interests in protecting its people and communities.

The universal goal of the International March of the Living is to help inspire participants to better understand the atrocities of the Holocaust and to examine the roots of prejudice, intolerance, and hatred.

The Miller Center engages in education and public service focused on protecting vulnerable communities.