GAMBRILLS, Md. — The Caucus of African American Leaders, or CAAL, announced an alert system they launched Monday to identify racial hate crime incidents in our area.
The Emmett Till Alert System is what they’re calling it, which is designed similar to an Amber Alert system.
The announcement was made inside the Kingdom Celebration Center in Anne Arundel County. That's the same church where two hate crimes were reported in the past month.
Carl Snowden, one of the CAAL organizers, said the new Emmett Till Alert System is supposed to help inform people of racially-motivated hate crimes from happening.
“In the year 2022, the FBI director Christopher Ray said the greatest domestic terrorist threat to the nation is white supremacists," Snowden said. "The Emmett Till alert will work similarly except it’s focus will be primarily focused on people who are victims of hate crimes throughout the state of Maryland."
Snowden said they created the privately funded app, Emmet Till Alert System, to make Black leaders and Black organizations and clergy groups in Maryland aware of hate crimes. He said due to the long and recent history of racially-motivated crimes against minorities it has prompted this response.
“We saw it in 2017 when a young white self-evolved terrorist walked into a church and shot and killed nine people of color," Snowden said. "We saw racial violence again occur in 2022 when some elderly Black people, for the most part, went to a place to do grocery shopping and 10 elderly black people were murdered because of the color of their skin."
That’s just a small fraction of some more publicized hate crimes that have happened throughout our nation.
Bishop Antonio Palmer, who leads Kingdom Celebration Center, said within the past month his congregation has fallen prey to multiple hate crimes.
“We had a vandal come and write racial epithet on our door, the door of the church and did it twice. The first time we didn’t have a camera on to catch them but the second time we did,” Palmer said.
Police later identified and arrested a 66-year-old man for vandalizing the church property which was racially motivated.
He was later released but organizers said incidents like these would be reported in the Emmett Till Alert System which would then notify all Black elected officials and certain Black organizations for them to figure out how to respond to these issues of hate.
“The Emmett Till Alert System as a step in the right direction for our communities to govern itself and to heal itself,” Palmer said.
“We have to take hate crimes terrorist threats seriously,” Snowden said.
Multiple organizations are supporting this initiative including the NAACP, the National Action Network, the Urban League, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Transformative Justice Coalition to name a few.
The alert system is privately funded and will take $6,000 a year to maintain.
Organizers said they are taking donations to make sure this creation stays afloat. To donate you can make checks payable to UBC and mail them to 1350 Blair Dr. Suite H, Odenton MD, 21113.
Or you can make contributions via cash app at $unitedblackclergy.
