Coronation Street actress helps police build bridges to migrants

The three-and-a-half-minute film, featuring Coronation Street actress Amy Forrest, has been shot in Hull, which has a sizeable Eastern European community, particularly from Poland.

The film, made by Polish production company Astor Productions, is also intended to help break down barriers between these communities and police which may be a result of negative experiences in their country of origin.

PC Sharon Houfe, of Humberside Police’s community cohesion unit, said: “We are trying to develop links with Eastern European communities because there are some issues as regards barriers towards engagement with the police which may be because of the situation in their home country.

“It’s also about raising awareness and encouraging people to report hate crime.

“We do know that across the board hate crime is under-reported for a variety of different reasons. Even if it’s happening at a low level and it’s not being dealt with that can be a problem because it escalates.

“If you look at disabled-related hate crime, often I think it’s just a lack of awareness that what’s happening to people is hate crime and it’s not being reported.

“There’s also ‘mate crime’, where they get befriended by people and then taken advantage of. We would always encourage people to report it.”

PC Houfe also said she expected the force to consider following the example of Greater Manchester Police, which earlier this month began recording attacks on people following alternative lifestyles, such as goths and punks, as hate crimes.

The current Home Office definition of hate crime is any offence against a person motivated by hostility towards their disability, race, religion, gender-identity or sexual orientation, whether perceived to be so by the victim or any other person.

“I’m sure that will be discussed,” said PC Houfe.

North Yorkshire Police has also said it is monitoring “with interest” the scheme run in Greater Manchester.

In 2007 in Lancashire, goth Sophie Lancaster was kicked to death and her boyfriend, Robert Maltby, from Todmorden, was attacked because of the way they were dressed.

The film, which will be launched on Wednesday, follows Forrest’s journey as she witnesses three incidents where a man has verbally abused three different minority groups.

Her character contemplates whether what she has seen is hate crime, who to turn to, and whether to call police.

The DVD will be available for viewing on the force website and will complement a presentation delivered to other minority groups in the city.

Last year, the Home Office published its first figures on hate crime, which showed 43,748 hate crimes were recorded by the police in the year to 2012.

Of these, 82 per cent were race hate crimes; 10 per cent were sexual orientation hate crimes, four per cent were disability hate crimes, and one per cent were transgender hate crimes.

Latest figures for Humberside Police were not available.

However, a report in 2010 to the former Humberside Police Authority showed that fewer than half the people who commit racially or religiously aggravated crimes in the force area were being brought to justice.

Sanction detection rates for these offences – where someone is charged, summonsed, receives a caution or other formal sanction – were at 46.4 per cent.

The statistics, which covered sanction detection rates between April and August 2010, showed a fall of nearly eight per cent on the same period the previous year.

The force was, however, out-performing its group of seven similar forces in tackling racially and religiously aggravated crime.