You can’t simply blame Brexit for hate crime rise, says police chief

It existed before referendum, he says

THE spike in recorded hate crime after the EU referendum was only partly caused by an actual increase in offending, says a senior policeman.

Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton – the national policing lead for hate crime – told MPs that growing awareness of the problem was also responsible, along with people reporting incidents they previously would not have.

His comments undermine the claims of many on the Remain side that hate crime had soared solely as a result of the Brexit vote on June 23.

Mr Hamilton told the Commons home affairs committee there were concerns that the referendum result could have led to some hate offences. But he said he couldn’t ‘point to intelligence’ to support that.

He said police had diagnosed three reasons for the increase in reported offences in the immediate aftermath of the poll. ‘One, increased awareness, two, people reporting stuff that pre-referendum they wouldn’t have reported because they weren’t aware to do it, or just hadn’t got the courage, and thirdly, the prevalence of increased actual offending,’ he said. ‘We think it was a combination of all three.’

Mr Hamilton added: ‘ Hate wasn’t born the day we had a referendum. People’s views on these things didn’t happen that day. You can’t blame any single incident.

‘Last summer we also had the murder of a number of people in a nightclub in Miami related to the LGBT community. We also had the Charlie Hebdo issue right through France the previ- ous year. So, there have been a number of factors that have increased the awareness of hate crime and the response to [it].’

Paul Giannasi, hate crime policy adviser to the National Police Chiefs’ Council, told the committee they expected to see a rise in hate crime around major international events.

‘We think that was evidence of greater awareness and fear of crime prompting people to report things they may not have done,’ he told MPs.

Claire Light, equality chief at Greater Manchester Police, said the force had monitored hate crimes in the run up to the referendum and the weeks after. She told MPs that only a small number of cases were explicitly linked to Brexit, including one where a complainant had been told: ‘I voted for you to leave, now you need to go home.’

She said: ‘We had about five or six during that [13-week] period where it was explicit that it was linked to the referendum, [out of] about 150 to 200 every week.’

Mr Hamilton added that there is now so much online hate crime that forces are ‘behind the curve’ in dealing with it.

He said: ‘The backlogs for cyber examinations across the UK are considerable. That’s not just for hate, it’s for child sexual exploitation, people trafficking, drug offences and so on.’ The committee also heard from Melanie Jeffs, a manager at Nottingham Women’s Centre, which was involved in a scheme with Nottinghamshire Police officially to recognise misogyny as a hate crime.

She said the reforms, which were brought in last summer, had allowed unacceptable behaviour to be tackled.

The campaigner, who suffered a wave of online abuse when the initiative was launched, also told the committee about one incident that had involved a ‘typical white van man’ – but later clarified that she was not suggesting there was any typical behaviour for men who drive white vans.