Hate crime campaign under way
February 18 marked the start of our two-week long national hate crime campaign, which will target the night-time economy.
The main objective of the campaign is to improve hate crime reporting amongst workers employed in the night time economy. Examples include taxi drivers, takeaway vendors, licensed premises staff and public transport workers – all of whom also form part of the campaign’s target audience.
We will be working in close collaboration with public and private sector partners to share key messages and raise awareness of the campaign’s objective. Indeed, work has already taken place with the Scottish Business Resilience Centre to develop an awareness training package which can be delivered directly to partners and those employed in the night time economy.
Our analysis and performance unit published the profile of hate crime in Scotland. It noted that workers in public-facing occupations linked to the night-time economy were at increased risk of falling victim to this type of crime. Over 6700 hate crimes were recorded in Scotland in 2017/18 and 66 per cent involved people being targeted because of their race, while 16 per cent had a sexual orientation aggravator and seven per cent a religious aggravator.
Hate crime is national priority. One of our local priorities is rural crime. Last week I attended the Lanarkshire Rural Crime Meeting. This group is chaired by our area commander and consists of representatives from police leaders across Lanarkshire, partner agencies, local elected members and also the National Farmers Union.
It is an opportunity to update everyone on police activity in rural areas and share information about any issues of concern, including thefts of farm machinery and livestock, and considers criminal activity affecting animal welfare. Once such incident that causes concern is ‘sheep worrying’, a formal offence under the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Act 1953.
About 11.45am on February 15 at a farm near Coalburn, two dogs attacked a flock of sheep. One dog was a black German Shepherd style and the other a brown Lurcher type. This resulted in one sheep, valued at £5000, having to be humanely destroyed.
South Lanarkshire has a large rural community. The impact of crime on these communities can be devastating and affect lives and livelihoods. We pro-actively focus on crime groups whom we know target farms and farmland for expensive machinery and animals. We also work with farmers to provide security advice and additional patrols where possible.
If you have any information regarding rural crime call police 101.