9
May
2017
By Calvin at 10:22 GMT, 6 years ago
In February this year, South Yorkshire Police launched the new ‘Hate Hurts. Report it.’ campaign to raise awareness of hate [crime], increase understanding of the hurtful impact it can have and encourage its reporting.
Since the launch of this campaign, officers have seen an increase in the number of hate crimes and incidents reported by both victims and witnesses, allowing action to be taken to identify offenders and bring them before the courts.
Based on this increase in reports, over the past few weeks officers have successfully been able to arrest and charge two people for hate crime offences in Sheffield.
In March and April two victims reported instances to police where they had been subjected to a hate crime because of their race and or religion. On receiving these reports, local officers launched investigations to understand the circumstances of the offences and identify the offenders.
Following these investigations, police were able to arrest and charge the offenders for the offences and in one of the case, they were also able to enforce a Community Behaviour Order (CBO), to prevent one of the offenders from entering a specific area.
Sheffield hate crime lead Temporary Chief Inspector Ian Proffitt, commented on these results and the campaign: “It is known nationally that hate is an underreported crime, so to tackle this and hate incidents in South Yorkshire we launched the ‘Hate Hurts. Report it.’ campaign.
“This action was taken as hate is a very real, hurtful crime that can cause distress to not only victims but vulnerable communities who may be subjected to it. To prevent and work to tackle this issue, we have been working with our partners and local community groups to increase engagement and understanding of hate and the impact it has.
“I hope through our continued commitment to raise awareness and attention to the results we achieve, we are able to offer reassurance that hate is taken extremely seriously and where possible, we will work to bring offenders before the courts.”
If anyone would like any more information about hate, or our campaign you can visit the website on http://www.southyorks.police.uk/help-and-advice/z-crime-types/hate-crime. You can also report a hate crime by calling 101, emailing enquiries@southyorks.pnn.police.uk or make contact with an anonymous third party reporting centre.
Everyone at South Yorkshire Police is committed to tackling hate, so if you’re a victim or witness remember ‘Hate Hurts. Report it.’
Comment:
Regularly reading accounts on police website news pages reaffirms my confidence in the efforts our police service go to in order to fight this insidious crime in spite of very tight budgets.
It is for this reason that we must all do what we can to reduce the still enormous number of unnecessary crimes that take place every day, because we have failed to take care of ourselves or our property. By not having that burglary or our bike stolen enables the police service to spend more time dealing with the crimes that are difficult to prevent and hate crime is just one of those offences.
There are many unnecessary crimes that we can prevent. Just take a look at the list on this page: https://thecrimepreventionwebsite.com/home-security-assessment/736/opportunity-for-crime/
