Source: New Zealand Police (National News)
Please attribute to Deputy Commissioner Iwi and Community Wallace Hauhama
Police have today released the Improving our Response to Hate Crime Report, a summary of the views, feelings and ideas expressed by communities and people in Aotearoa on hate crime and hate incidents.
The report outlines a range of opportunities our communities identified where we can better our response to these incidents.
Following the terror attacks on Christchurch masjidain, Police invited members of our communities to talk with us about hate crime so we could better understand its impact in Aotearoa.
Our approach was to encourage open discussions so as an organisation, Police could better understand what participants were thinking, seeing, and feeling, and enable them to share their experiences with us.
Over 350 people from a range of cultures, faiths, sexual orientations, genders, abilities, and ages, shared their experiences of hate crime with us.
From this, we identified several opportunities and improvements for Police and other agencies.
This includes the establishment of Te Raranga – a four-year partnering programme responsible for improving internal systems, practices, and processes to provide staff with skills to identify hate crimes and make it easier for victims to recognise and report hate crime to us, and the establishment of a multi-agency advisory group to inform the work of Te Raranga and strengthen our work across agencies.
Another key piece of work underway within Police is our Reframe – Te Tarai Hou strategy, a complementary programme to Te Raranga, to improve our frontline staff’s decision making and interventions to reduce harm and reoffending.
Police have also implemented a number of improvements including changes to the way we record hate crimes, and delivery of our first round of staff training so they can properly identify an incident as a hate crime.
Police are focused on improving the systems we currently have in place, and identifying the changes we can make now that will have the greatest impact and real improvements for victims of hate crime.
Violence or threatening behaviour driven by hate is not acceptable and should not be condoned by anyone.
We are committed to identifying and tackling incidents motivated by hostility or prejudice regarding race, faith, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or age, that can cause harm to victims.
We always ask anyone who believes they have been a victim of hate crime to contact us on 105 or 111 if you are in immediate danger or a crime is happening now.
We encourage any members of the public who have any feedback on the report to contact Police on www.police.govt.nz/contact-us/give-feedback-about-police
The report and our Action Plan can be found here: www.police.govt.nz/advice-services/advice-victims/hate-crime/te-raranga-…
Note for media: Deputy Commissioner Haumaha will be available for interviews between 2pm and 3pm. Please email media@police.govt.nz to request a time.
ENDS
Issued by Police Media Centre
