Hate Crime Ambassadors

Essex Police has spent several years establishing a network of Hate Crime Ambassadors in Essex.

This network includes members of the public or staff within organisations that have been trained to raise awareness of Hate Crime and signpost victims to report Hate Crime.

Despite the impact of hate crime, it is largely under reported. This is for a number of reasons, but typically because people do not want to speak to the police, cannot access a police station, do not know how to report or are targeted too frequently which discourages them from reporting.  This is why Essex Police started the Hate Crime Ambassador network. The aim of the network is to provide local people in Essex with information about hate crime so that they can identity hate crimes and encourage others to report.

What is a Hate Crime?

A Hate Crime is any crime or incident perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards their actual or perceived race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or gender identity.

Hate Crime can take many forms such as:

  • Threat of, or actual physical assault
  • Verbal abuse
  • Intimidating behaviour and harassment including email, online and social media
  • Damage to property
  • Offensive leaflets, posters or graffiti
  • Inciting others to commit hate crime, including on social media platforms

The Ambassador role:

The role is flexible, being carried out as and when you are able to and has two responsibilities:

  1. Raising awareness of Hate Crime – telling people when appropriate – what a Hate Crime is.
  2. Signposting victims you become aware of to report Hate Crime.

As a Hate Crime Ambassador, you’ll be able to speak confidently to others about what a Hate Crime is and where to report Hate Crime.  You can do this by holding conversations with friends/family/colleagues etc., organising events to raise awareness of Hate Crime, helping out at events to raise awareness of Hate Crime, distributing Hate Crime leaflets, providing information to a victim that you might come across, reporting Hate Crime yourself if you witness it or a victim wants you to report it on their behalf.

There is no set time that you must allocate to being a Hate Crime Ambassador, nor is this role solely for a specified period.   However, we do ask that you are committed to the role and aim to raise awareness of Hate Crime whenever and wherever possible.

Preparation for the role:

You’ll receive a half-day training from an Essex Police Hate Crime Officer.

The training will cover:

  • An awareness of what Hate Crime is
  • How you can support victims to report Hate Crime
  • Basic safety advice for victims
  • General signposting to support victims

Monitoring of the role:

  • You’ll receive regular updates from the Essex Police Hate Crime Officer for your area, as well as support around the role if needed.
  • You’ll be asked to provide information on a bi-monthly basis about how many people you have spoken to about Hate Crime and how many victims or witnesses you have provided information to about reporting Hate Crime. This information is for monitoring purposes only.

“Back in 2018 I decided that I wanted to become a hate crime ambassador. My reasons for this were due to the increase in the number of people that I was speaking to that had been subjected to some form of abuse which fell under the ‘Hate Crime’ umbrella. I wanted to know how to help these individuals, how they can obtain support and also how to report the things that were happening to them.  Having completed my training with Essex Police and Victim Support I felt ready, equipped and confident to help.”  Cat Wright, Hate Crime Ambassador at Community 360

 If you’d like to apply to become a Hate Crime Ambassador find out more by clicking on the links below:

If you work or volunteer for an organisation that interacts with members of the public, has a physical office and a private room, you could also enquire about your organisation becoming a Hate Incident Reporting Centre.  To find out more Click Here