Successful prosecution in Rugby
A 56-year old defendant from Rugby has been sentenced for racially abusing two people including a police officer.
Read more...Police are hunting three boys in connection with an "appalling" homophobic knife attack on two men.
According to the BBC, the men were assaulted at about 21:20 BST on Saturday (22nd June 2019) as they walked down Manningham Road, in the Anfield part of Liverpool.
Police said three young boys, aged between 12 and 15, began by making "homophobic insults" before one of them produced a knife, moved towards the men and attacked them.
One of the victims suffered serious but non-life threatening injuries to his head and neck. Both victims were taken to hospital.
Merseyside Police said the men, both in their 30s, had been "left incredibly shaken by the incident".
Det Insp Tara Denn said: "This was an appalling and unprovoked attack on two men simply making their way home."
"The hate and violence that has been inflicted on them is simply unacceptable and won't be tolerated on the streets of Merseyside," she added.
The incident in Liverpool follows a series of serious homophobic incidents that have occured on a weekly basis across the country.
Various articles and stories in the media have highlighted different hate crimes that are occured in recent weeks. Although this news is not positive news in the sense victims of crime are at the centre of the story, these articles have been very useful is raising public awareness of hate crime and that reports help start an investigation.
Underreporting of hate crime has been a constant theme in the last decade, so it is refreshing to see that people are coming forward and reporting.
According to a Statistical Bulletin from the Home Office (2018), both Homophobic and Transphobic hate crime have increased year-on-year since 2012/13. According to the report, the increase of hate crime has been down to a genuine increase in actual hate related crimes, but also a result of more people coming forward and reporting.
EQuIP, a pan-equalities charity based in Warwickshire support victims of hate crime and they strongly encourage anyone that experiences and/or witnesses any form hate crime to always report.
Benji Evans from EQuIP commented ''We are experiencing a increase in hate crimes/incidents in Warwickshire each year. As an equalities charity,iIt is always concerning to see hate crime being committed and people are targetted for simply being themselves whether that is because a person is gay, black, originally from Poland, as a disability or identifies themselves to be a goth or transgender. Our society will not tollerate a person being hateful towards another person of any nature''.
''Another way to view the increase of hate crime is to be positive. As a charity we are seeing regular hate crime reports coming in from a variety of partners which include other charities, community leaders, sport teams and individuals that are all getting to know about the services. Our charity as develope a strong rapport with many partners that have the confidence to contact us to report hate crime''.
Victims and/or witnesses can ring 101 in a non-emergency situation, but always call 999 in an emergency.
In Warwickshire, some people that do not want to contact the police directly, so they can report hate crimes/incidents to EQuIP via the www.reporthatenow.com website, email: advice@equipequality.org.uk or if they prefer to speak to someone in person, you can contact telephone EQuIP on 01788 863117.