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[RORY]: “To be honest that's not how it feels from within the communities. I hear members of the community talking about things that have happened to them which won't necessarily be a criminal offence, but is still hate and certainly caused harm. From my experience of working with Sussex Police as LGBTQ+ liaison officer and also a community member, people don't go to the police because they don't see anything happening. Equally the police can't do anything because it's not a crime, it's what is called a ‘hate incident’.” Do you think there's any way that we can bridge that gap? Bridging that gap is where trust and confidence will get built and people will start coming forward... “We want people to report incidents as well as crimes. People who cause incidents may go on to commit a crime against somebody. If we don't know about those incidents it's difficult to be able to know where to target our engagement, our prevention and community relations. I would encourage people to report. Knowing about incidents means that we can put greater operational presence, visible presence or whatever our operational response needs to be.” Does third-party reporting have an important role in this? “Definitely. We get a number of third-party reports now but anything which encourages reporting we're very happy to continue to develop, build and work on and any fresh ideas anybody has about that then please do feed them in, because anything which enables a person to report something they perceive as a hate crime or incident is important for us.”
JO SHINER
NEW CHIEF CONSTABLE OF SUSSEX POLICE Jo Shiner, the new chief constable of Sussex Police, talks to Chris Gull and Rory Finn (previously a member of Sussex Police as the LGBTQ+ liaison officer). ) This article is a distillation of an hourlong conversation. These questions and answers have been paraphrased and edited for brevity.
Congratulations on your new role. You were in Kent previously and did research on hate crime. How is that experience going to inform your policy here in Sussex? “Thanks. I have had experience previously in relation to hate crimes and policing different communities and I have three priorities coming into this. The first is to protect our communities, the second is to catch criminals and the third is to deliver an outstanding service to victims, witnesses and the wider public. “Protecting communities is probably the most important one to me, where some of my experience leads me into the future. It’s more
important to prevent crimes than to investigate once they have happened, especially crimes that are very personal such as hate crime, because I see the impact that has on victims. “Over the past two years the number of reported hate crimes in Sussex rose significantly in comparison to the rest of the country.” Is it because victims haven't got the confidence to report or is it because actually there's a greater number of crimes? “I’ve been in policing for years and I’m not sure anybody has ever got to the bottom of that, but I would like to think that when we do our surveys people have the confidence to report crimes to Sussex Police and trust that we'll then act upon them.”
The trans community is reporting hideous amounts of online abuse and trolling. What support is there? “We have victim support and several charities also offer support. Online abuse is really difficult to monitor as people hide behind pseudonyms, but where we can, we'll investigate and put people in touch with victim support or other charities.” What are your top tips for how to respond to online abuse, because sometimes it doesn't feel like it's worth coming to the police. What would you do if you were experiencing that? “Well I do experience that, particularly now with a high-profile job. I’ve experienced comments in person and online about being appointed as chief. I try to take a proportionate and pragmatic approach, doing my own triage around whether it's something I really need to worry about. I think it is down to individuals because some individuals obviously take it to heart probably much more than I do. I also have what I call an ‘objective buddy’, who I trust implicitly. When I get something that appears to be more than one person who's put one comment on, I ask them to read it and tell me whether they think
