Hate Crime and Coronavirus (3781/20)
Request
1) Please tell me how many hate crimes were reported to your police force where the words ‘coronavirus’, ‘corona’ or ‘virus’ featured in the MO code, between January 1st 2020 and to date (03/03/20)
2) For the five most recent cases, please provide me with details of the reported hate crime, redacted so as not to fall foul of Section 40. (E.g. A man of Chinese descent was shouted at on the bus and accused of having the coronavirus).
Response
Please find enclosed our response.
Please note that these data should be interpreted with caution. Comparing numbers of incidents/crimes can be misleading and does not necessarily indicate the likelihood of someone being a victim of crime. In addition, the number of incidents/crimes recorded in an area over a period of time can be influenced by a number of factors. Consequently statistics on incidents/crimes for one period may not necessarily be a good indicator of future incidents in that area.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
Question 1 = 9 cases
Question 2 = 7 cases of verbal abuse / 2 cases of physical abuse towards the Chinese community .
It is important to note that a search was performed on the word “virus “ and “Corona “ this search would not have picked up any searches where there is a variation on the spelling . To provide information at any lower level than that has been provided would be likely to attract exemptions of
Section 30 (1) Investigations and Proceedings conducted by a Public Authority
Section 40 (2) Personal Data.
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