LGBTQ+ people in Hackney don’t feel “comfortable or confident” that police will take them seriously when reporting hate crimes, community group Queertopia have said.
Its founder Joanne English told the Hackney Post she had heard many stories of anti-LGBT hate crime in Hackney but couldn’t get people to report them to the police.
Ms English stressed the vulnerability felt when reporting hate crimes: “You need assurance that you will receive support. They say, ‘what’s the point? They’re not going to care’… I didn’t understand how much the community mistrusted the police.”
At a hate crime awareness event on 14 October at Hackney Town Hall, Ms English put her concerns to the police. She said: “When I held my first forum, about half the attendees left after the police introduced themselves. How are the police going to build trust with the LGBT community?”
In response, Met Detective Superintendent Brittany Clarke asked why people had left, and said it would have been “helpful to speak to them” to understand “what it is we’re doing wrong”.
Around 90 hate crimes are reported in Hackney every month, said Supt Clarke. She identified underreporting as a problem and encouraged anyone who thought they might have witnessed a hate crime to come forward.
“Don’t hold back” Clarke said. “This includes anything you see online — take a screenshot in case the poster takes it down, we can sometimes trace their address even if it’s anonymous”.
Ms English emphasised that this problem was not with the individual local officers, but with the “culture of policing more generally”.
The Metropolitan Police were approached for comment but did not respond.
Flora Symington is the beat reporter for Dalston. She is interested in community-focussed stories with people at their heart, and wants to hear from anyone and everyone in this vibrant area. Before moving to London Flora wrote for the Basingstoke Gazette, Cherwell and Trill Mag, as well as presenting and producing podcasts about media and the arts.