Victims of hate crimes towards East or Southeast Asian from March to August 2022

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.22.027029

I note you seek access to the following information:

Please refer to the data as a count of Victims and offences by outcome where the Ethnic Appearance is East Asian or Southeast Asian and the Record has one of the below:

i) RI - Racial Incident
ii) RS - Anti Semitic Racial Incident
iii) IS - Islamaphobic
iv) FH - Faith Hate
v) RR - Racial Incident Resolved
vi) RW - Racial Incident Withdrawn
vii) RX - Racial Incident Declassified
viii) RT - Anti Semitic Racial Hate incident Resolved

I am seeking two data sets:

1. During the periods 01 March 2022 – 30 August 2022, number of Victims of Racist and Religious Hate Crime with an Ethnic Appearance of East Asian or Southeast Asian:

2. During the period 01 March 2022 – 30 August 2022, number of Offences with a Racist and Religious flag where Victim Ethnic Appearance is East Asian or Southeast Asian, by Outcome including the following Categories:

- Outcome Pending
- Charged/Summonsed
- Charge/Summons Alternate offence
- Caution - adult
- Community Resolution
- Prosecution prev. - suspect ill
- Suspect identified; Victim supports;

evidential difficulties

- Suspect identified; Victim not support;

evidential difficulties.

- Investigation. complete: no suspect

identified

- No Crime

Decision

I have today decided to disclose the located information to you in full.

Please find below information pursuant to your request above.

Note: Please ensure the notes page is read in conjunction with the data.

Due to the monthly low count and the short timeframe the data covers, some of the offence count by outcome categories (table2) have been amalgamated to mitigate the risk of persons being identified.

Superintendent Martin Kirby, the lead responsible officer for hate crime has said:
The Met deliberately has a low threshold for the recording of hate crime offences compared with other cities around the world. We want to assure anyone who may have been a victim, we will respond and we will take robust action wherever possible.

Hate crime affects so many people, and here in London and with the diversity of our communities, I want to be clear that our objective is to provide victims of hate crime a first class service. I want to ensure they have the confidence and trust in us to report crimes and know we will work hard to get the justice they deserve.

These are our Hate Crime Outcomes and Performance Officers (HCOPs) and they are based in every Basic Command Unit (BCU) in the Capital. These officers are our hate crime experts and work alongside a central team to ensure we have an overview of every hate crime reported to the Met daily.

They support initiatives, drive our performance, train colleagues and perform a range of other duties aimed at improving how we deal with hate crime. The HCOPs are a huge part of the success in combating hate crime and I am very proud of the work they do. Sadly, we are still seeing hate crime London, but our performance in dealing with this insidious crime is steadily and consistently improving.

Upon talking to partners I am also starting to see improvements in confidence to report hate crime which is likely to be increasing reports. Improving confidence is key to securing the support and cooperation of communities, victims and witnesses and again the HCOPs are working with local partners to help build upon this.

We continue to work in partnership with charities to increase the support for victims. We have seen an increase in our victim referral to CATCH, an alliance of charities who give specialist help and advice to victims and witnesses of hate crime, whilst we investigate their case. The Met are responsible for the vast majority of all referrals received by these charities and we work closely with CATCH partners to ensure victims are supported according to needs and regardless of which community they come from.

Of course we also need an effective response to perpetrators and ‘Operation Arawn’ has provided funding and coordination to BCUs. This has involved dedicated hate crime weeks of action. This Operation has focused on locating suspects wanted for hate crime and dedicated additional time to progressing investigations.