A Massachusetts state trooper assigned to a “hate crimes” unit co-authored a training course that calls the parental rights activist group Moms for Liberty a “hate group,” documents show.
Trooper Emily Todisco of the Massachusetts State Police’s Hate Crimes Awareness and Response Team (HART) is listed in a training syllabus as one of two co-authors of a course with a slideshow comparing Moms for Liberty to white supremacists and Antifa. The slideshow, first reported by The Daily Wire, is used by the Massachusetts Municipal Police Training Committee, which provides training to more than 20,000 police officers across the state.
Todisco is also a member of the state’s “Task Force on Hate Crimes” appointed by Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, according to a state website. Todisco’s HART unit was announced in November 2023 to improve “data collection and information-sharing” on hate crimes, develop police training with the Municipal Police Training Committee and other goals.
“By comparing Moms for Liberty to neo-Nazis, this training plainly places our moms, dads, and grandparents in harm’s way,” Charlie Misseijer, director of police and legislative affairs at Moms for Liberty, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The 2012 shooting at the Family Research Council’s offices in Washington, D.C., reminds us that authors of these types of law enforcement training materials, like Todisco, need to be held accountable for the dangerous and wholly contrived narrative they construct simply because they detest the pro-family, pro-freedom and pro-American values that Moms for Liberty represents.”
The police training committee did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Todisco and the training’s other co-author, Curriculum Specialist Hannah Gianfriddo, could not be reached directly.