Police Competences’ in Preventing, Investigating and Combatting Hate Crimes in Poland — Part 2

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The article is divided into two main parts. It refers to selected data on hate crimes recorded in Poland and Police effectiveness while preventing, investigating and combatting it. Based on available sources, there is no problem with extremist activity on a large-scale in Poland nowadays, but for sure there is an urgent one with the increasing number of hate-motivated incidents, both with their social impact. Awareness-raising and educational campaigns that aim at prompting respect for human rights and tolerance for diversity are very needed in this matter. Also, law enforcement agencies, including the police, play a key role while tackling racism and bias. Uncontrolled and unpunished manifestation of hate, both with the lack of appropriate and unequivocal state response to such incidents, also quiet, social approval to hate-motivated behaviours, seem to be the main components of extreme movements growing. Thus, the main aim of the article has been to describe the phenomenon of hatemotivated incidents that were reported in Poland within past years and to diagnose Polish police officers’ skills, knowledge and qualification in this field, together with qualitative analyses of accessible training programmes. Selected terms (racism, discrimination, intolerance, xenophobia and hate speech) and symbols (the Celtic Cross, the SS-Totenkopf and the Triskele) that promote hate were defined (part 1) both with police officers’ identification accuracy. Research results presented in this article were gathered by using variety of methods and techniques, both theoretical and empirical (part 2). The data that refers to police competence in the context of preventing, investigating and combatting hate crimes was mainly collected as a part of a doctoral research conducted by the author in 2012–2014.