Birmingham City Council is working closely with the Community Safety Partnership to reduce all hate crimes and provide an appropriate response to victims. Alongside all the relevant agencies the city council actively encourages the reporting of hate crimes and incidents. This may include an offence motivated by hostility, prejudice and hatred on the grounds of race, religion, faith or belief, disability, gender and sexuality. If, as a member of Birmingham's diverse communities, you have suffered verbal abuse, harassment or a violent attack based on the above, you will have been a victim of a Hate Crime. The police recognise that some people may not wish to be identified and they respect that. However providing anonymous information is still valuable to the police and other agencies in tackling these crimes. You can report a Hate Crime to Birmingham City Council if it has some direct involvement in resolving the situation (i.e. through the provision or delivery of a service or employed services/staff), please use the Contact Us Online form or go to the Contact Birmingham Webpage. Self reporting forms are also available on the Police and True Visions website to assist the recording and reporting of a hate crime, if the City Council is not in a position to respond , you may use these forms if you have been the victim or an observer to a hate crime. Your information will be treated in confidence and will be used to provide a co-ordinated response to hate crimes within Birmingham. Please note that in order to investigate properly any reported hate crime, will need your co-operation. Your report will be treated in the strictest confidence. Why report a Hate Crime A hate crime is a violation of your personal and civil rights. Hate crimes are not only crimes against the targeted victim, but also against a particular group as a whole. Hate crimes are attacks on communities. Effective action against hate incidents requires that these crimes be reported, to the Police, City Council and all other appropriate agencies. Only if a hate crime is reported can we, together, take action to deal with it. No one has the right to harass,threaten or assault you because of who you are. There is something that Birmingham residents can do. In the first instance hate crimes should be reported to the Police, if you do not wish to do so you may report hate crimes directly to any of our Neighbourhood Offices, public access offices or a local organisation combating racism. Information is available from your local library, Citizens Advice Bureau and community centres. Alternatively you can contact the Commission for Racial Equality(Birmingham) on 0121 710 3000 or use the website links at the bottom of this page. If you have witnessed or been the victim of a hate crime, do not hesitate to call 999 or 112 (Mobile) for the police and emergency services or report it using the Hate Crime / Incident Reporting Form. If you still have doubts about exactly where you should report a hate crime that you have witnessed/experienced, feel free to telephone 0845 113 5000 for advice. If you feel that you need support in order to report a hate crime, ask a trusted friend, family member, colleague, teacher, or your GP to help you, or telephone Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or West Midlands Police on 0845 113 5000 for support in making your report. What is a Hate Crime A hate crime is a crime in which the perpetrator's conduct is motivated, in whole or in part, by hatred, bias, or prejudice, based upon the actual or perceived race, colour, religion, national origin, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation of another individual or group. Examples of hate crimes include assault or attempted assault with a weapon, assault or attempted assault without a weapon, sexual assault, rape, domestic violence, vandalism, harassment, sexual harassment, threats, intimidation, name calling, graffiti, phone harassment and text harassment. The City Council believes that domestic violence, racial or religious harassment, homophobic abuse/crime and elder abuse are all hate crimes and should not be tolerated. What is disability hate crime? If you are being harassed, abused or taunted due to disability then under the proposed revision to the Criminal Justice Bill this will be a hate crime. What is domestic violence? Domestic violence is a crime. If you are being sexually or physically abused by your partner or ex-partner or you are being threatened with abuse, humiliated, isolated from friends and family, then you are experiencing domestic violence. What is homophobic/trasnsphobic abuse/crime? Homophobic violence and abuse can cover a wide range of actions including taunts, damage to property and serious physical assaults. A homophobic crime, often called a "hate crime", is defined in the Good Practice Guidelines for Dealing with Homophobic Incidents, published by the Association of Chief Police Officers as "being motivated by hatred or fear of homosexuality". Such incidents could include all sorts of crime. Victims of homophobic/transphobic crime do not have to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual; they just have to be perceived as gay, lesbian or transsexual and/or the crime to be perceived as containing or being influenced by homophobia/transphobia. What is racial harassment? Racial harassment is an incident or a series of incidents intended or likely to intimidate offend or harm an individual or group because of their ethnic origin, colour, race, religion or nationality. The following definitions have been adopted by Birmingham City Council from the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report: " A Racist Incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person" " Racism in general terms consists of conduct or words or practice which advantage or disadvantage people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. In its more subtle form it is as damaging as in its overt form". Religious hate crime and the law Religious hate crime is not currently recognised as a criminal offence in the same way as racial and homophobic crime. However, if a crime is committed against someone because of their religion, it may be interpreted as an attack on their race as well. This means it can be treated as a racially aggravated or motivated attack. For example, criminal courts have decided that attacks on Sikhs and Jewish people are racial incidents. If it's proven that the offender's main motivation was based on prejudice or their hatred of another race, then the sentence can be more severe than for the same offence without a racial motivation. If, in the case of a crime committed against a Muslim, be it physical violence or harassment, then this could be deemed Islamophobic, or Anti semitic if Jewish (non racial. Please complete the online form located at the True Visions website at www.report-it.org.uk Alternatively you may wish to report a hate crime using the Police services Hate Crime / Incident Reporting Form To contact us for Comments, Complaints and Compliments: The 3C's reporting contact page