Hate Crimes - Coronavirus/Covid-19 - 454/20

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

I’m writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act to request statistics on the number of hate crimes where a victim mentioned coronavirus/covid-19 as being a factor in why they were targeted which have been reported to your Constabulary between January 2020 to March 10 2020.

For each case, please could I have the following:

1. The age(s) of the victim/offender
2. The gender of the victim/offender
3. The nationality of victim and offender
4. Time, date, and location of the incident
5. Details of the incident including any mention of coronavirus or Covid-19.
6. Details of any convictions linked to the above
7. Whether these are live investigations or have been closed.
8. Could I also please have details on the number of reported hate-crimes in your Constabulary each year broken down month by month between January 2019 to December 2019.

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police.

I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows.

It should be noted that the information provided is as a result of a search all crimes flagged as hate crimes and carried out an MO keyword search for the terms "corona", "virus" or "covid" during the period specified by your request.  As with any keyword search, the search will only return exact matches within the Crime MO.  This does not account for differences in terminology and/or spelling used.  Also, we cannot search the crime investigation screens/additional information screens, if the terms are not used within the MO the crime will not be identified.

The following caveats should also be noted:

• Please note for one crime the victim was a business so this information is not relevant to the victim breakdown.
• Please be advised that there are 3 details of crimes, which are of a similar nature as they all relate to the same incident involving 3 different victims.

Bearing all of the above in mind, please see the attached document which should satisfy your request.

If you decide to write an article/use the enclosed data we would expect that you to take into consideration the factors highlighted above so as not to mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.