West Midlands police are resolving fewer hate crimes
The amount of hate crimes that West Midlands police are resolving is decreasing, whilst the amount of hate crime reports, increase.
In 2020 9% of hate crimes reports, which includes racist, homophobic and transphobic verbal/ physical abuse, resulted in West Midlands police acting against the suspect. This was a decrease from 2019 when West Midlands resolved 13% of hate crime reports.
These statistics are from freedom of information requests, obtained by Liberty Investigates.
The amount of hate crimes each year is also increasing. West Midlands police saw a 36% increase in hate crime reports from 2019 to 2020.
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Such figures come despite new initiatives launched to tackle hate crime such as the new Hate Crime reporting app, launched by West Midlands Police.
Sergeant (SGT) Richard Crooke, the chair of West Midlands Police Federation, says although the force is committed to tackle hate crime: “Post Covid, officers are balancing a big workload and that is the key problem. Some investigators are carrying out 20-40 investigations.”
The statistics also showed that the number of people who reported a hate crime, but decided not to go through court proceedings, also increased. In 2019, West Midlands police reported 1,222 hate crime victims withdrawing from court proceedings. This increased by 45% in 2020, to 1778.
SGT Crooke, believes the main reason for the significant rise in hate crime is due to the way hate crimes are recorded: “Often people conflate hate crime and hate incidents. For example a hate incident could be someone making a passing racist comment. As such an incident doesn’t constitute a crime, it wouldn't go to court anyway. So, when you look at the statistics you have to take that into consideration. The majority of them would actually not be considered a crime but recorded as a hate crime because of the perception of the victim.”
Anna McLauchlan, chief officer at the national charity, Communities Against Crimes of Hate, says she is not surprised at the alarming rate of victims withdrawing from court proceedings. Expanding on this, she says: “ For hate crime victims such statistics will make them question the point of reporting to the police. It is such a challenge to report hate crime in the first place; having repeated knock backs where there is no resolution would lead to them becoming despondent, normalizing hate crime incidents and thus significantly impact the victim’s wellbeing.”
For SGT Crooke, although the West Midlands police force need to do more in order to create a better relationship between ethinc minorities, who tend to be victim to hate crimes, “these problems are right across society.” For him, the key is: “to recruit more people from those backgrounds so we look more like the people we’re serving and to create understanding between ethnic groups.”
McLauchlan believes that although there’s an increased awareness of hate crime: “ essentially, victims to be listened to, believed and for their views to be taken into account when law enforcement and others handle their hate crime reports.”
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