HATE crime based on race or religion has seen a “significant” rise in the last 12 months, says Avon & Somerset’s chief constable.
Community leaders have voiced concerns that many people are starting to change how they live their lives because of fear of being harassed in the street amid a growing sense of “anxiety”.
Recent months have seen unrest between mass immigration protesters and anti-racism counter-demonstrators in Bristol and controversy over the hanging of flags on lampposts in streets across the region.
The issue was the focus of Avon & Somerset police and crime commissioner Clare Moody’s October Police Question Time session with Chief Constable Sarah Crew, which also included Stand Against Racism and Inequality (SARI) chief executive Alex Raikes and Dan Green of Bristol-based group Bridges for Communities.
Ms Crew said: “Hate crime can have a hugely traumatic and corrosive effect not just on the individual but on the community and how society operates.
“We’ve been seeing lots of protests, fuelled very often by lots of feeling. There are heightened community fears and they are borne out with hate crimes that we’ve seen.”
Ms Crew said police have a daily monitoring operation looking at every reported hate incident,and information from social media and teams, to ensure a “robust” response.
She said there had been a “steady but consistent rise” in hate crime over the last five years in Avon & Somerset. In the year to September, all types of hate crime were up 3.1% and race- or religion-based hate crime up 4.9%.