On an early Tuesday morning in March, over a dozen 911 dispatchers from across San Diego County are checking into the Sheriff’s Department for a special training on hate crimes.
The goal is to teach dispatchers to gather key evidence that prosecutors can then use to charge people with hate crimes, said Deputy District Attorney Abigail Dillon, the lead hate crime prosecutor who runs these training sessions several times a year.
“The details that a dispatcher is able to get from someone who is on scene witnessing it as it happened or (from) the victim of the crime itself or even the suspect,” Dillon said. “I can’t emphasize enough how important that information gathering can be and how critical that evidence can be… READ MORE