667 police officers in total were victims of racist or religious hate crimes in 2016-17, up from 428 in 2014-15, a freedom of information request has revealed.<\/p>\n
Offences recorded included harassment, racially or religiously aggravated grievous bodily harm, as well as non-violent offences.<\/p>\n
The Metropolitan Police said it was committed to prosecuting those that abuse its officers in this manner.<\/p>\n
Compared to 40% of the capital\u2019s overall population, 13.4% of the force is made up of black or ethnic minority officers, a total of 4,215 officers employed by the Met Police.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this day and age, I just don\u2019t get it,\u201d said Ken Marsh, Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we\u2019re doing everything we can to assist our colleagues in any way we can when it\u2019s brought to our attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leroy Logan MBE, a former superintendent and founding member of the Metropolitan Black Police Association, said he was saddened by the findings.<\/p>\n
“We’re talking about things that happened 20, 30 years ago but are coming back,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Logan described his own experiences saying, “When I was a constable, I’d get it internally and externally, especially from youngsters.\u201d<\/p>\n
“One time I was in an estate in Islington and I heard someone shout the n-word from the balcony. I think unfortunately we are not seeing public attitudes improving today.”<\/p>\n
As well as the 667 officers, 54 civilian police staff were victims of hate crime in 2016-17, bringing the total to almost two offences each day last year.<\/p>\n
Labour’s shadow police minister, Louise Haigh, said: “There must be a zero tolerance approach to race or religious hate crime and it is vital officers are able to carry out their roles protecting the public.”<\/p>\n
Scotland Yard said, \u201cPolice officers have a duty to record all crime that they become aware of, including when either they or their colleagues are victims.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny form of hate crime is unacceptable and our officers and staff should not be subject to this kind of abuse.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an employer, we encourage our officers and staff to report these incidents so we can give them the support they need and bring perpetrators to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Official figures show the number of police officers and staff in\u00a0London\u00a0subjected to racist or religious hate crime has risen by more than 50% in two years. 667 police officers in total were victims of racist or religious hate crimes in 2016-17, up from 428 in 2014-15, a freedom of information request has revealed. Offences recorded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":24178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}