Examination of Witnesses (Questions 640
- 659)
WEDNESDAY 3 NOVEMBER 2004
ASSISTANT CHIEF
CONSTABLE JUDITH
GILLESPIE, INSPECTOR
ROBIN DEMPSEY,
MR DAVID
WILSON, MR
BRIAN DOUGHERTY,
MR IVOR
PAISLEY AND
MR PHILIP
MOFFETT
Q640 Chairman: When you have public
meetings they can question you?
Mr Dougherty: Yes. They can use
the members of the Board to direct questions to the Chief Constable.
Q641 Chairman: My question is, is
hate crime something that figures in these public meetings?
Mr Dougherty: Yes, it does. There
have been at least two presentations that the PSNI have made to
the Board and also quite a number of independent members have
raised the issue.
Q642 Chairman: I am trying to get
from you not what the PSNI feels about it but whether, when you
are holding public meetings, the public can say what it is they
are concerned about. Is a significant concern hate crime or are
they more concerned about traffic and burglary and mugging old
ladies and all the rest of the things that the public are concerned
about?
Mr Dougherty: I would say, Chairman,
that it is a significant concern of the local community.
Q643 Reverend Smyth: How many members
of the public actually attend the public meetings?
Mr Wilson: We do not have that
information to hand.
Q644 Reverend Smyth: Would I be right
in saying that it is very insignificant? At least, that is the
report I have been getting in Belfast.
Assistant Chief Constable Gillespie:
Certainly in my experience of the last Policing Board meeting—and
I hope I am not interrupting my Policing Board colleagues—the
public gallery was full. At the last public meeting that was held
outside Policing Board premises in Omagh, again the public gallery
was full. The next Policing Board meeting, to be held tomorrow,
is in Armagh and we expect that it will attract considerable local
interest.
Q645 Reverend Smyth: Are they taking
the opportunity to ask questions or put issues?
Assistant Chief Constable Gillespie:
At the last Policing Board meeting when the public gallery was
full there was for the first time a question asked from the public
gallery. That was in relation to the issue of parades as it happened,
but it is setting a precedent and we welcome that.
Q646 Chairman: If we could turn to
our Cookstown representatives for a moment, one vital function
of your job is making arrangements to get the views of the public
on matters concerning the policing in your district. When you
do this where does hate crime figure? High or low or medium?
Mr Moffett: In terms of hate crime
issues, Chairman, unfortunately it is quite low down in terms
of the survey work that we do locally. For example, the policing
survey for 2003 which we are mandated to do featured approximately
three% of hate crime respondents perceiving hate crime to be an
issue. We tried to follow that up with focus groups.
Q647 Chairman: I am sorry; I am not
making myself clear. We know about the %age. What I am trying
to get out of you is, in the whole range of policing, when we
are talking murder, when we are talking about robberies, when
we are talking about car crime, when we are talking about traffic
offences, are your people, when you come to find out what they
think, very worried about hate crime or is it something that only
figures quite small?
Mr Paisley: Perhaps I can answer
that. There are perhaps a number of reasons why it does not feature
highly.
Q648 Chairman: The first answer is
that it does not feature highly?
Mr Paisley: It does not feature
highly, no. We have been in place in Cookstown for 18 months.
I suspect that during that initial consultation period there were
not a significant number of hate crime incidents. We are now going
through the process of consultation to determine the policing
priorities for the incoming year, April 2005 to March the following
year. One of the difficulties we have in dealing with hate crime
is that, certainly in the mid Ulster area and Dungannon South
Tyrone area, many of those who are the victims of hate crime are
migrant workers. They are not empowered in the sense that quite
often they come in for a limited period and go away again. They
are probably not confident about reporting incidents and in a
sense there has perhaps not been to date a satisfactory engagement
with them. I think that the figures of hate crime that we have
gleaned from our colleagues in the PSNI are significantly increasing.
We would see our role as engaging with them so that we can identify
that as a priority in the incoming year, April 2005 to March the
following year.
Q649 Chairman: So you are only really
just getting involved with the problem?
Mr Paisley: Correct.
Q650 Mr Beggs: If I could go back
to the PSNI, when Inspector Dempsey was here in May he said that
there was no agreed definition of "sectarianism". What
progress have the police made in defining sectarianism?
Inspector Dempsey: Certainly when
I was last with the committee and gave evidence at that stage
we were in the process of agreeing a definition and we consulted
with a number of interested parties and started to involve the
organisations. As a consequence of that the Police Service have
now agreed not just the definition as to what we perceive sectarianism
to be but also how we record it and on 20 September we put in
place recording procedures, along with disability and religion,
to ensure that sectarian incidents were being recorded.
Q651 Mr Beggs: Her Majesty's Inspectorate
of Constabulary noted the need for the police to collect data
on sectarian incidents in its 1999-2000 inspection report. Can
you tell us why the PSNI still do not collate such data and give
us some indication of when you expect to begin collecting such
data?
Assistant Chief Constable Gillespie:
As Robin has said, we have started to collect that data since
28 September this year. We have been monitoring sectarian incidents
on probably a less scientific basis in relation to those incidents,
for example, at interface areas or where there has been a clear
sectarian motive for an assault. As it happens, last year there
were over a thousand sectarian incidents and for the comparable
period this year there have been over 700, so sectarian incidents
have decreased. However, that is absolutely no cause for any complacency
because 700 incidents is still 700 incidents; it is a lot of sectarian
incidents going on there and we need to tackle that as well. We
are introducing a much more comprehensive and scientific recording
system from 28 September which should help us to identify the
trends and patterns there.
Q652 Mr Beggs: Can the witnesses
from the Policing Board tell us what it has done to encourage
the PSNI to begin collecting such data? Can you explain why the
policing plan 2003-2006 contains no performance indicators for
the PSNI in relation to sectarian incidents and how the Board
will hold the PSNI to account for progress in this aspect of hate
crime in the future?
Mr Dougherty: Today, Mr Beggs,
we have just commissioned research into the views of non-heterosexuals
and minority ethnic groups. We have put out a tender process and
we hope that by June 2005 we will have an extensive survey which
will allow the local community to give their views on such attacks.
Mr Wilson: In terms of the policing
plan, Mr Beggs, we do not have performance indicators prepared
and we do not collect the information. We have now started to
collect it and sectarian incidents will be in next year's policing
plan. We had a joint strategy day last Wednesday and the whole
gamut of hate crimes is in next year's policing plan in terms
of monitoring the numbers and increasing protection, so it will
be featuring heavily in next year's policing plan now that we
can collect the information.
Q653 Mr Beggs: Coming back to the
PSNI, Larne District Command Unit already collects data on the
number of sectarian incidents and included performance indicators
and targets for responding to sectarian incidents in its 2003-2004
policing plan. Can you indicate whether any other DCUs have followed
this lead? If not, why not?
Inspector Dempsey: Certainly a
number of district commands across Northern Ireland, Larne being
one of them, and I would also cite Belfast, Moyle, Ballymena,
Limavady and Coleraine, have been collecting information on sectarian
incidents on a local basis, something that has not been happening,
and the reason why police have not given statistics is that it
has very much been a local policing initiative because it identified
that there are sectarian incidents and by recording them and identifying
them it has allowed them to police them in a manner where people
identify other incidents. What we have done now is put in place
a process and a procedure that will now see statistics on sectarian
incidents right across Northern Ireland and we will at last start
to feed that information out in respect of all district command
units.
Mr Wilson: Larne had indicators
on sectarian incidents because in the DPP public consultation
surveys the Policing Board Commissioners of Larne responded and
said that paramilitary activity and sectarianism was one of their
major concerns. I think Carrickfergus was the other area where
that happened and that is why in Larne's local policing plan that
particular performance indicator and target appeared. Local policing
plans relate to local issues and that was a survey which resulted
in that.
Q654 Mr Beggs: Our evidence shows
that there is under-reporting of hate crime incidents, whether
they be racial, homophobic, sectarian or related to disability.
Can you indicate why victims of such attacks do not feel confident
about reporting attacks? What has PSNI done, or does it intend
to do, to encourage more comprehensive reporting?
Assistant Chief Constable Gillespie:
There can be a lot of reasons why victims of hate crimes would
be unwilling to come forward to the police. First of all, they
may perceive that the police will not take this seriously. They
may be unwilling to disclose their sexuality in case of homophobic
incidents. They may have been repeat victims and they feel what
is the point in reporting to the police. That is something that
we intend to look at in the area of repeat victimisation for the
forthcoming months, because if we can address repeat victimisation
I think again we can have quite a significant impact on hate crime.
There may be a perception that the police will not accurately
record hate crime and that is something that we are very keen
to deal with, to make sure that in our hate crime policy and in
our reporting procedures we are robust in recording every single
hate crime incident as a true reflection of what is going on out
there. Also, there can be language and cultural barriers in terms
of recording crimes to the police, which is why we now have offered
a 24/7 interpretation service for English when it is not their
first language. That was introduced on 1 September this year and
already we have had a significant number of calls to use that
service.
Q655 Chairman: Which languages?
Inspector Dempsey: We have had
an interpretation service for the police over the last three years.
On 1 September we introduced three new services. One was telephone
interpreting, which allows police officers 24 hours a day, seven
days a week, to access an interpreter by phone.
Q656 Chairman: In which languages?
Inspector Dempsey: In whatever
language is required. It is a base of hundreds and hundreds of
languages. We also have a local face-to-face interpreter service
based in Belfast. We have accessed the telephone service 62 times
during September, we have accessed the face-to-face service 47
times and we have also put in place a new contract for signage
for the deaf and we have accessed that six times. What I would
like to say in relation to reporting is that some of the initiatives
that I talked about earlier are based around reporting. We recognise
that people may not directly want to come to the police, so we
have been putting in place third party reporting, Crimestoppers
reporting, and we are developing internet reporting, so we want
to make the Police Service as accessible as we possibly can to
allow people to come forward.
Q657 Chairman: I am very interested
in how you are cracking the language problem. You do not have
a Chinese interpreter on board 24 hours a day, do you?
Assistant Chief Constable Gillespie:
Yes.
Inspector Dempsey: The way the
service works is that we have contact with a mainland based telephone
interpretation service. You dial a number.
Q658 Chairman: What about face-to-face
delivery?
Inspector Dempsey: Face-to-face
we have the service provider based in Belfast and that has a database
of over 160 interpreters and those interpreters can be accessed
across Northern Ireland. There is a delay in getting an interpreter.
That is why we have a telephone service, to ensure that we can
get information quickly and then follow it up with a face-to-face
interpreter.
Q659 Mr Beggs: Do you agree that
the police and government approach to hate crime has been reactive
rather than proactive to date?
Assistant Chief Constable Gillespie:
I am not sure that we would agree that because a lot of the initiatives
that have been taken forward within PSNI, both at corporate and
local level, are proactive initiatives, putting information out
into communities, in leaflets and on our website as well. We certainly
have not been reactive, albeit that it has to be said that the
issue of hate crime has only become a major issue for PSNI within
recent years when we started to collect accurate information about
hate crime. Perhaps you could have said some years ago that we
were reactive but certainly not now.
Inspector Dempsey: A number of
initiatives have been police-led partnership initiatives where
police have identified the need and brought their partner communities
on board not just in respect of crime but also in respect of quality
of life issues for these people who do not have a basic understanding
of the provision of tactical services, and so on, so the police
have certainly taken the lead in many of those initiatives.
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