After announcing herself online, a police force’s new “hate crime officer” received a flood of criticism.
On October 3, Sumaya Bihi revealed her new position as the “Hate Crime Officer for Leicestershire Police” in a tweet.
She tweeted a picture of herself wearing a hijab and requested people to get in touch with her if they had any questions or concerns while tweeting under the Leicestershire Police Stay Safe account.
But the young Muslim lady received a barrage of insulting texts, some of which included offensive language.
Leicestershire Police responded by stating that they are looking into the matter and are “helping our hate crime officer in a variety of ways.”
To assist the force in staying current with laws pertaining to hate crimes, a new position has been created. Additionally, it motivates alleged victims to file reports of crimes against them.
It comes after statistics indicated how the number of hate crimes reported by police has increased by more than a quarter in a year, according to data published this month.
In the year ending in March, there were 155,841 offenses reported in England and Wales, a 26% increase from the prior year and the highest increase in five years.
A representative for Leicestershire Police informed the Leicester Mercury about the alleged harassment Ms. Bihi had to endure and said, “We are assisting our hate crime officer in a variety of ways.”
We’ve begun our own probes into the abuse after Twitter received reports of unacceptable tweets.
Other Twitter users expressed their support in reaction to the harassment.
I can see you’re already getting abuse on Twitter simply for being a Muslim, one person commented.
“It’s about time social media companies take charge of monitoring this type of harassment,”
The recent outbreak of violence between small groups of the Hindu and Muslim communities in Leicester is still being addressed by Leicestershire Police.
They have made scores of arrests and are looking into more than 100 occurrences.
50 officers were working as a team to look into the occurrences, which included looking over more than 6,000 hours of body worn camera video.
At least one of those detained is suspected of attempting to stir up conflict between the two groups on social media by disseminating fake information.
The Home Office said that it was unclear if the increase was the consequence of an actual increase in hate crimes or the effect of improved police recording and victims feeling more confidence to come forward after the publication of the hate crime figures last week.
109,843 hate crimes based on race, 8,730 based on religion, 26,152 based on sexual orientation, 14,242 based on disability, and 4,355 based on transgender identity were reported by the police.
Hate crimes based on sexual orientation rose by 41%, those based on disability by 43%, and those based on transgender identity by 56%.
The number of hate crimes inspired by transgender identity was lower than those driven by all other reasons, but it increased by the largest amount.
The Home Office said that during the last year, transgender issues have been “heavily discussed on social media,” which may have contributed to an uptick in related hate crimes.
According to the statistics, the majority of hate crimes reported to the police were racially motivated, as in previous years, and climbed by 19% from the year ending in 2021.
There are several crimes for which there is evidence of dual motives.
For the first time, there have been more than 100,000 racially motivated hate crimes reported in a single year.
Religious hate crimes increased by 37% in 2012, reaching their highest level on record.