There has been a huge rise in race related hate crime in the capital since Brexit. The worrying rise has led to over 400 people suspected of carrying out these horrific acts.
Police chiefs have laid the blame for these attacks squarely at the EU referendum result. Hate crime is defined as an offence, perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic.
Scotland Yard deputy commissioner Craig Mackey said: “It does appear that the Brexit vote unleashed something in people where they felt able to do things that, let’s be really clear, are illegal”, in terms of verbal and physical hate crimes against people seen as foreigners, said Craig Mackey, the London police chief.
Usually the Met police service deals with around 25-50 hate crimes on a daily basis, since the Leave vote won the number has risen to 57-78 a day, sharp increase.
Mackey continued: “We’ve seen an increase in both reporting of incidents and hate crime. Overall hate crime rises, some rise in both anti-Semitic and Islamic hate crime – all of these are intolerable acts.”
The police chief mentioned that the range of offences included verbal abuse, criminal damage and harassment. There were also more “higher level” crimes including GBH (grievous bodily harm).
UK wide in the period of June after the EU referendum there were over three thousand hate crimes reported to the police service, which is over a 40 per cent rise over the same period in 2015.
Earlier this month, the National Police Chiefs’ Council stated there were 289 reported offences across England, Wales and Northern Ireland on June 25 – equivalent to twelve per hour.