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The Arkansas Times and KUER FM 89.

Hello again everyone.

Thanks very much for joining us the legislative debate over the hate crimes Bill advocated by the governor once again underscored the political and cultural tensions the subject has always brought to the surface.

And there's new concern that crimes motivated, motivated by race or religion or ethnicity, ****** orientation, those crimes are increasing in a moment to Arkansas academics who have long studied the issue.

First COVID-19 in Arkansas.

If the trend lines have generally taken a more favorable trajectory of late, generally speaking, well, there still remains real concern that the state and the nation are lowering their guard.

Case in point, the comparatively static percentage of Arkansans who have received the Coronus vaccine coronavirus vaccine.

And the substantial number of their fellow citizens who decline it joining us now.

Doctor Jennifer Dillehay of the Arkansas Department of Health and the state epidemiologist Ann Ray Handley, president of the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care.

Thanks to both of you very much for being with us.

Doctor.

Let's begin with you.

Obviously, the statistics are better than they were this time a year ago, and certainly Midsummer or even last autumn.

But as the society?

Is reopening however gradually that might be?

Is that progress jeopardized?

Well, I think there is potential for that progress to be jeopardized, especially since we're now seeing the spread of some of the variants of concern in Arkansas.

It makes it really important for people to be immunized with the vaccines to prevent the spread of those variants well elsewhere in the country they've been offering everything, or at least proposing anyway.

Beer shot or shots of jimsons I guess.

And maybe a cold suds.

And even cash payments to get people to take it.

Our best arguments here seem to be working only moderately well.

What's to do here?

Well, I think that there are a variety of approaches that we need in Arkansas.

You know, many people simply need more information.

They have questions or concerns about the vaccines in a way to get them addressed.

So we're working with our health care providers around the state to be able to provide the vaccine.

An individually work with their patients to be able to address their concerns.

Sorry, go ahead doctor.

Well, and then I think there's other people who just have difficulty accessing the vaccines is not important to them at this point in time 'cause the rates are low, an if the vaccines can be made to convenient to them.

That may also help them get vaccinated.

Ray Handley from your perspective.

It's a challenge, one I think that that we can meet at AFMC.

We've been privileged to work for the health Department in a variety of fronts uncovered for the last year.

Contact tracing case investigation.

Running a call center trying to get people to come in for their second shots, but most recently on the vaccination front and we worked out an agreement last week with the health Department where we're essentially going to pop up vaccine clinics around the state.

We're going to show up at some events like to **** days and we're going to try to go into some of the smaller areas.

Rural areas that had been the more reluctant.

To set up in a deuce, some vaccinations, and we're mapping out a plan with the health Department.

This week, we're going to start out tomorrow at the food court and Center Mall in Fort Smith, and then we have a number of places we're going to be next week trying to reach some of the people that.

Have chosen not to be vaccinated before, but in essence going on the road and taking the vaccine where they are.

The earliest earliest instances of that.

Our efforts along those lines, Ray Handley, have not seemed to have proved very effective.

Can they be what's going to change?

It's going to take some education.

I think the faith community, I think can and hopefully will do more.

I think the governor's been, you know, quite out there to talk about the goals.

There's probably needs to be some.

Some media there needs to be some you know.

Trusted figures get up and talk about this.

Again, if we take this on the road out into some of the communities.

Uh, and make it more visible.

I think that'll help.

You know we were going great guns for awhile.

We were had.

Not enough vaccine and more people wanted if they can get it, and now it's reversed.

We've got.

A surplus of vaccine by the J&J.

News that didn't help.

I think that slows down, but we just have got to be out there and be this book be seen.

You know, in some of the outlying communities, well, let me stay with Ray Handley for just a second as to follow up on Doctor Dillehay.

What's it?

What's involved here Ray?

The reluctance to take the vaccine is it?

Is it logistical?

As as Doctor Dillehay indicated, and in fact in some rural areas, vaccine may be more difficult to access.

That in more urban areas, but also is there a political or social or cultural issue here that has to be overcome?

It is all of that certainly the Pfizer vaccine, which takes some special handlings better a bit of a challenge of role areas.

I think there is a lot of misinformation out there, you know we can blame social media and talk radio for part of that.

You know right now the you know people hearing and believing that you're going to get a Bill Gates Microchip implanted in you if you.

If you get a vaccine.

And we just have to keep.

Sharing the facts and talking about the fact that you know this vaccine is 95 to 100% effective and certainly proven safe around the world.

You have to look no further than what's going on in India now, which is devastated by Covid Nation that only two percent is vaccinated versus turning the corner here in the United States in very large part because of vaccinations.

And we just have to get people to.

To see that somehow and it's going to take multiple points of contact and media and people talking about that to get some of this reluctance.

Overcoming it is more widespread, I think in Rule areas that it is, you know, see here in Little Rock, and that's where we're going to take this.

Yeah, Doctor Dillehay to follow up on Ray Handley.

Now I'm talking about figures of authority.

Anyway, the Governor of Arkansas, why?

One with a with a stunning reelection victory just recently.

Or you know, a couple of years ago has been on his knees practically every day since Kovid was first heard of begging Arkansans to follow the protocol and of late get the immunization.

Yet still, there's some resistance out there.

If you could snap your fingers, what what would happen?

What would move this along?

I think one of the hard thing is for people to know who they can trust an there's so much misinformation out there, and ways of looking at the safety and efficacy of the vaccines that people have a hard time sorting through that.

So everyone needs someone they can go to that they trust to help them sort through the information that's real and accurate in what is not.

So if I could snap my fingers.

I would provide each person in Arkansas with someone they could talk to that they could trust about the vaccines for them to be able to make an informed decision.

I'm not aware of a family room.

You may be.

I'm not aware of a family physician or General practitioner who isn't urging his patients and their families to get the injection.

Is there something else that can be done beside that?

Are we talking about political figures here?

Doctor dillehay?

No.

Well, it could be someone that they trust, but I think partly, you know the benefit.

Someone who's familiar with the vaccine is they can help the patient or the recipient, no.

What's real and what's not.

So they can decide for themselves what they need to do.

Many people believe the misinformation out there, 'cause it sounds quite reasonable and less.

You know, some biology or a little bit about how the vaccines were developed.

And.

People who know that can help people sort through and clarify in their own minds.

The risks are the benefits of the vaccine.

And this also there was a herd immunity.

We have heard you know four months now, maybe the if there is such a thing as an ultimate answer that herd immunity was the goal, that that frankly the globe was was aiming for.

But some fairly disquieting headlines within the last 4872 hours from the scientific community, the medical community, indicating that that may be a fleeting hope.

Could I have your assessment, Doctor?

Doctor dillehay yes.

Well, you know COVID-19 is a new disease.

We don't really know what proportion of the population needs to be immune in order to achieve herd immunity.

An it could be that as the illness becomes endemic, meaning more common like we get the flu every so often or other Corona viruses that cause the common cold that.

We won't ever get to the same kind of herd immunity that we do say with measles, measles.

It develops long lasting life long immunity if you get it and the vaccine does the same, that is not the same with COVID-19.

It's well documented that people can get it more than once and we may not have lifelong immunity for most people for this virus.

So the concept of herd immunity doesn't work so well.

In this setting, it's really has to be people protecting themselves in their family by getting vaccinated, even though as a population we may not be able to completely eradicate the illness.

The governor has a 90 day goal, announced a 90 day goal on immunization.

I assume you support it.

Is it realistic?

I think it is a worthy goal an I do hope that we can achieve it.

I think right now is an important time to get vaccinated.

We have an increasing number of what we call variants of concern circulating in Arkansas an every time someone gets infected with COVID-19, they assist in the spread and the development of variants an we want people not to get infected and the best way not to get infected of course is to get vaccinated.

So we want people to take advantage of this and take it seriously so that we can stop even low level of spread because right now small things that we do in Arkansas can have big effects down the road, such as in the fall or the winter time with kovat 19.

So achieving a goal of vaccinating half the population I think is worthwhile an I think we can do it.

Ray Handley, a quick review of the numbers here.

If I've got them down correctly since Covid was first diagnosed or identified in our state alone, about 340,000 Arkansans of our fellow Arkansans have been infected and.

Approaching 6000 have died of it.

It's pretty sobering numbers.

It is indeed and.

We're just gonna have to, I think systematically.

Stand up the reasons people are objecting this information and try to dispel these one by one.

In the one of the most frequent I've heard is, well, you know there's got to be something wrong with the vaccine.

It was just developed too quickly.

But his doctor Dillehay knows.

I mean, this is not new science.

The RNA vaccines and the science you know goes back years.

These these have been under development and on the shelf more or less.

For years.

It's just that the companies were incentivized by money and.

To get him finished in rolled out so we have to take things like that one by one and try to click down the misinformation.

And as I said, that's one of the most frequent ones that that that I've heard, but there are certainly others out there.

Gotta end it.

I got ended there because we're out of time.

Ray handling Doctor Dillehay as always, thanks to both of you for coming on.

We'll see you again soon from simple if stupid, harrasment to theft or vandalism.

From assault to felony murder, crimes containing an element of racial or religious bias offences involving ethnicity or nationality or gender identity, ****** orientation, criminal justice community reports a startling increase.

Now, two members of the UALR criminal Justice faculty have been awarded a federal grant to study anti Muslim activity in our state.

Both have researched and written extensively on hate crimes of all forms.

Joining us now.

Doctor Tusti 10.

Bensel and Doctor Robert Lytle doctors.

Thank you very much for being with us.

Doctor 10 Bensel will begin with you.

The extent are we able to quantify the extent of anything in Arkansas that might fit under the rubric of hate crimes.

Sure, so it's difficult to understand the extent the frequency of these types of crimes occurring in Arkansas simply because we don't really have a mechanism of collecting that data.

Now the police Department's do report it to the FBI.

However, because we didn't have hate crime legislation on the books, it was very difficult to gauge when something was a hate crime, so.

Our hope through this project is to shine light on these experiences, but also to understand the gravity of what is happening in our state.

Well, there is a common thing.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is a kind of common theme in in in hate crimes of all forms.

If the same psychology or pathology is at work is it not in say an anti Muslim crime as it would be an anti gay or anti transgender offense?

Yeah, it is targeting a specific group or a classification of groups and usually the motivation is hate or bias against, you know, either a racial group or religious group.

You know ****** orientation or gender identity and so forth.

Yeah, Doctor Lodl your take.

You know, I think what you said is pretty spot on too.

You know, I think one of the things to keep in mind is that there's a lot of reasons why that may motivate people to target individual groups, but.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, that's kind of the that is the common theme for all of these is that a group of people are being targeted because of their Association or their membership within one of these groups.

Well, there is, in terms of quantifying hate crimes.

Is there not also?

So we read a reluctance on the part of many victims to report it.

Yes, I mean victims are often will shrug off these types of experiences.

They will be scared to report it for further victimization.

And we see this among all different types of groups from Muslims to LGBTQ and so forth.

They either don't know that there are people willing to help, or they don't know where the resources are, or they're just scared to report it well, is how much help is there available as as a practical matter?

Yeah, so usually you know if you experience a hate crime you want to report it to the police.

Problem with hate crimes specifically is that for it to be classified as a hate crime, you have to have a.

You have to be able to prove offender motivation and so and so that is often pretty difficult to do and so that you know.

Also, I feel like discourages people to report and look at look at resources, but other than reporting it to the police, there's really not much more to that now I know that the federal government has now federal agencies have now been putting out grants.

To help these types of programmings come about, I actually just saw on the other.

I'm yesterday and so that gives me hope that there is going to be more resources in the Community for these types of crimes and experiences to doctor a lot of let me go to you.

How much how receptive typically can we know how receptive law enforcement agencies have been are now in terms of dealing with hate crimes?

Sure, absolutely.

You know some.

Very preliminary research that we've done, so I'm not really reporting findings on this quite yet, but the the early takes that we're seeing is that police officers, especially in a state like Arkansas that doesn't didn't.

Until very recently have a state wide definition.

They just relied on the FBI definition for what a hate crime is.

Police departments in particular were just kind of.

They kind of treat these crimes like any other crime.

If it is a hate crime, they can send it to the FBI, but when it comes to like training and things like that for the most part, these kind of get lumped in with other crimes.

Same thing with victim services as well, right?

If you don't have a definition for a hate for hate crimes, you don't have hate crime specific victim services, or at least it's harder to garner that.

Well, let me ask, both of you is is there attendance because we are dealing with crimes that affect and are reported by.

If they are reported ethnic, religious, cultural, social, ****** minorities.

Is there a tendency to marginalized these offenses?

Doctor Larry alright yeah no Bob.

Well, so I guess what do you mean when you say marginalized, the defense is well?

I mean in the sense of marginalizing to not to minimize the the factor of hate as a compelling element in the offense.

Yeah, well and some of some of what Tuesday talked about earlier about.

You know the comp.

The complicated nature of proving a hate crime and really hate crimes aren't really considered to be hate crimes officially until the prosecution charges the offense as a hate crime, so it gets a little bit strange when it comes to how people can identify whether or not this is a hate crime or not.

That being said, I think that there is some.

Sense of that when they're investigating, and I do think from again the very early takes that we've had, that police departments generally take those crimes very seriously, but they're trying to treat them as they would other crimes that they also were trying to take very seriously.

But we haven't gotten.

We haven't really talked so much about crimes that are not violence, right?

Things that are more vandalism, or things that are more harassment, or things like that, and those aren't really covered so much under this new hate crime bill.

Either so if there may be some something going on there, we we aren't quite as sure yet there now I believe in to stick and correct me on this if I'm wrong.

Existing research does suggest that sometimes police officers do kind of.

They do kind of have a a a less intense response I guess to some of these types of crimes, and especially if hate crime.

Groups if the groups that are being targeted are maybe.

Certain types of groups, like we know that you know when it comes like homeless communities.

Sometimes those those individuals can kind of get overlooked because there's so many other things that are going on right.

The grant let me ask specifically about the grant that you've just received the two of you to study anti Muslim activity in Arkansas.

How are you going to go about doing this?

Just we do not have that many mosques right in our Islamic community is not the largest in Arkansas.

No, so there's actually a number of projects that are part of this larger, larger project, so the first year we will be doing face to face one on one, interviews with Muslim members in the community to undertake kind of really understand what their experiences are in depth.

In year two, we plan on sending out a survey to the larger Muslim community in Arkansas.

Based on the responses that we get in the interview and then year 3.

We are planning on talking to police officers to see how they handle hate crime situations.

What kind of training that they receive?

What kind of training they think that they still need.

And then we're also going to be talking to hopefully legislators to see what kind of obstacles that they ran into in passing.

For example, the class protection bill.

What kind of obstacles?

Or you know what kind of resources they need to keep moving forward?

Well, the political obstacles in the session of the General Assembly just concluded were obviously formidable, because the hate crimes bill that the Hudson said administration has for which it has long advocated and it has some other advocates, fell Anna substitute piece of legislation was adopted.

Doctor Leila will begin with you.

Your thoughts on that.

On the bill that was passed, it was to me a first step.

You know, the way I, I I study policy a lot in the way that I talk about this with my students.

As you know, most policy with complicated political issues like this.

It's a conversation, and to me this is the beginning of the conversation as far as the policy goes.

I I believe that.

We will probably not stop at this bill at some point will need to keep adjusting it and improving it and hopefully projects like the one that doctor 10 pencil and I are working on will kind of help inform some of those decisions moving forward.

But some of those things that still get stuck stuck out to me and they make me think of this is kind of a first step is the attention to.

Two serious and violent offenses.

We do know that you know people from many of these different communities that typically are protected by hate crime bills.

They tend to experience a wide range of of offending, but there's also, you know, the definitions of the groups that need to be.

They qualify for a hate crime, and I think those will probably also eventually kind of get.

More focused in if nothing else, just because logistically it's hard to implement a policy that's it's vague and or in big yuus like that.

Yeah, I wish we could go on an I promise we will at a future date but for the moment we're simply out of time not to.

10 bensel doctor lidel.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you for coming on.

And as always, we thank you for watching.

See you next week.

Support for Arkansas Week provided by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

The Arkansas Times and KUER FM 89.