Help Support local efforts to educate about Sikhs As part of SALDEF’s Law Enforcement Partnership Program, 4,200 police officials of the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department are now informed about Sikh Americans and Sikh religious practices. SALDEF and its volunteers provided similar Sikh awareness training over a period of one year to the entire 3,000+ officers of the Boston Police Department. When police officers are informed and aware of the Sikh identity, their response is positive and appropriate when interacting with Sikh Americans, unlike what we saw last month when local Texas police initially refused to file a complaint when a Texas A&M University Sikh international graduate student was accosted outside a Wal-Mart parking lot by an unknown male who assaulted the Sikh student screaming ‘terrorist’ while punching him in the face, knocking his daastar off. Unfortunately, many police departments do not have the budget to pay for the training that SALDEF provides. Every one hour of training, along with free educational materials, that SALDEF delivers on behalf of the Sikh American community costs $250. Help us increase our capacity and resources to take SALDEF’s Law Enforcement Partnership Program to other police departments across the country. Your monthly contribution of $20 will help fund one such training session for a police department. In 2007 alone, SALDEF’s staff and volunteers were directly responsible for training over 12,000 law enforcement officials in 17 states. Additionally, as of February 2008, all 43,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners at the nation’s airports have been trained on Sikh culture and beliefs by watching SALDEF’s training video
