Zero tolerance

“There is a whole group of people who just do not accept difference and they are racist and homophobic and they hate disabled people. They are obnoxious and objectionable and in many cases they are criminals.” So speaks one of London’s most senior police officers, deputy assistant commissioner Alfred Hitchcock (pictured above right), who leads on hate crime for the Metropolitan Police Service (Met).

I interview DAC Hitchcock and detective sergeant David MacNaghten, from the Violent Crimes Taskforce, which investigates hate crimes, at a security-conscious Scotland Yard.

Britain was appalled by the racially-motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 and the incompetent police investigation that followed.

The subsequent Macpherson report dubbed the Met “institutionally racist”. Independent advisory groups on race and homophobia were set up soon after and police attitudes towards hate crimes shifted. Reporting of incidents and offences increased as trust grew. So, too, did “sanctioned” detection rates – last year, 37 per cent of racist incidents led to a charge, caution, or other action, such as the aggravating nature of the offence being taken into account, or a crime being recorded or a suspect being identified, compared to 15 per cent in 1999, with much the same rise in detection rates for homophobic incidents. But disability hate crime remained ignored.

DAC Hitchcock says: “There has been a significant focus on race and homophobia and that work is fairly well-established, but disability needs to be raised to that level of awareness. But it is catch-up.”

I show DAC Hitchcock and DS MacNaghten the dossier of hate crime cases we have collected (see pages 19-24), and tell them that hardly any were investigated as hate crimes. They are not surprised by the scale of the problem – or the police response.

DAC Hitchcock says: “It’s the same for most police forces around the country – there is still room for improvement. When we have identified a crime as disability-related, I think we do appropriately and adequately investigate it, but the difficulty is always with the least experienced staff dealing with the incident and recognising it as a potential hate crime.”

The Met hears the views of disabled Londoners through the disability independent advisory group (DIAG). Last month, I met DIAG’s co-chairs, Anne Novis and Ruth Bashall. Most DIAG members have experienced hate crime, they told me, and many were dissatisfied with the police response. Disabled people are routinely asked intimate questions when they visit police stations to report crimes. DAC Hitchcock and DS MacNaghten are clearly embarrassed.
DS MacNaghten says: “We took those questions from the legislation but they don’t inform us of how we should respond policing-wise. So we have completely overhauled it and have now just four categories – physical disability, learning difficulty, sensory impairment and mental health problems.” These changes will be implemented next year.

The Met is attempting to transform its services for disabled Londoners. A taskforce scrutinises the case handling of every identified disability hate crime. Two police stations in every borough are now fully accessible. And, by next year, every disability hate crime will be “disaggregated” and flagged separately on the Met’s computer system. This will provide the first reliable set of police statistics relating to reported disability hate crime.

Hitchcock and MacNaghten are enthusiastic about Disability Now’s campaign. DAC Hitchcock says: “We are very supportive of where you are going. We have a key responsibility to bring offenders to justice, especially people who commit hate crimes. If possible, we can use the additional aggravating factor to make sure that the sentence is appropriate.”