Hate Crime Victims Urged To Report It
That's the message from Humberside Police this morning - they believe it's heavily under reported because victims are too scared to speak out.
Crimes against people because of their race, religion or sexuality are unacceptable and will not be tolerated - the message from Humberside Police.
New figures show more than 1400 hate crime incidents have been reported to the force over the last year. That's down compared to the previous year but police believe many more have gone unreported as victims are too scared to speak out.
They're now working to encourage more victims to come forward and report any incidents as part of Hate Crime Awareness Week, which starts tomorrow.
Sergeant Chris Sawby told Viking FM:
"Every matter that is reported to us is dealt with as an important priority for us because it's not acceptable that anyone should tolerate any form of abuse or hatred. Being you is not a crime and people should be proud of who they are and be confident in reporting it to police so that we can investigate these matters.
"People can be targetted because of their sexuality, because of their age, because they're disabled, because of their religion. A high proportion of the offences that we record locally are in relation to race and this is a concerning statistic and something that we are doing a lot of work on. We are trying to educate both victims and offenders and letting them know what hate crimes are as we want to increase reporting."
Sergeant Sawby says one way of doing this is by putting reporting boxes in key religious venues such as mosques and synagogues:
"So that if people don't feel confident in coming into the police for whatever reason, then they can fill in an online reporting form, submit it in the postal box and then one of our officers would attend and collect these forms. It's just another way for members of the public to report these incidents and raise these matters to our attention."
Andy Train from Hull has been the target of verbal abuse in the past because of his sexuality and says it made him feel like he didn't belong here. He told us:
"I was just trying to catch a bus and because the way I was dressed didn't quite suit somebody, it was just a fancy pair of shoes I had on, a group of youths didn't like it and started shouting names and that wasn't nice. It puts you off wanting to be in your own city centre and that's not right, being bullied is not right and it is unacceptable.
"It can knock your confidence, it might make you reluctant to go out or meet people and just generally step out of your door. Nobody should be made to feel like that, you shouldn't be made to feel that you can't go to work or you can't go to school or leave the house or go shopping, you should be able to do all of these things."
Andy also runs the Hull Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Forum and helps other victims. He says hate crime is happening far too often in the city:
"One of the main incidents was somebody being thrown into the river, which at the time of year the fact that it was low tide actually saved the person but that could have murder. I also know it's not just homophobia or transphobia incidents but there's also racism and incidents because of someone's age or disability taking place."