An advertising campaign aimed at encouraging the reporting and awareness of hate crimes and incidents was launched last week by the PSNI.The move comes amid news that over 60 Romanians subjected to racist intimidation in Belfast had left for home.
The advertisements carry the simple message ‘Nobody deserves this and nobody deserves to get away with it’ with photographic images representing the five main areas of hate crime – racist, homophobic, sectarian, religion and crimes against people with disabilities.
The advertisements will appear on billboards and bus shelters for the next six weeks and will feature primarily in areas reporting high instances of hate crimes: Belfast, Newtownabbey, Ballymena, Craigavon, Antrim, Cookstown, Magherafelt, Foyle and Coleraine.
Since last year there have been 771 reported racist hate crimes, 134 homophobic hate crimes, 35 faith/religion-related hate crimes, 1,017 sectarian hate crimes and 28 disability-related hate crimes. Over the same period in from 2007 to 2008 there were 757 racist hate crimes, 114 homophobic hate crimes, 62 faith/religion-related hate crimes, 1,056 sectarian hate crimes and 42 disability-related hate crimes.
Assistant Chief Constable Duncan McCausland contended that an increase in reports of hate crime were an indication that individuals felt more confident about reporting such incidents. However, the PSNI conceded that under-reporting remains an issue.
He said: “Reporting hate crime is one way of ensuring that further incidents are prevented and offenders are brought to justice.
“We want to encourage people, whether they are victims of a crime or witnesses to an incident, to report it to police. There are a number of methods available to make reports: in person, telephone or online reporting.
“We have recently seen attacks on members of our community. As a police service we are fully committed to playing our role in preventing such dreadful crimes occurring.”
