Shop workers to be given body cameras to tackle hate crime

BBC News, The Guardian and local papers Liverpool Echo and Wirral Globe all report on the decision by Merseyside’s Police Crime Commissioner, Jane Kennedy, to provide body cameras to shop workers in a bid to tackle hate crime affecting Asians in the region.

PCC Jane Kennedy, has received £105,000 from the Ministry of Justice for projects to support victims of crime. £35,000 of the grant will be used to pay for 48 body cameras to tackle hate crime. The Merseyside grant is also being used to purchase personal safety devices for high risk victims of domestic abuse.

The Guardian further reports that the MOJ is expected to announce a total of £12 million in grants to support victims of crime.

The cameras are embedded in a badge worn around the neck on a lanyard which shop workers can activate if they feel threatened in the course of carrying out their jobs.

Kennedy said: “A lot of the problem has been with corner shops owned by Asian families in white neighbourhoods that are being targeted by youths.

“We have been running a small pilot programme for the past year after a detective on one of our Sigma teams, which deal with race hate crimes, came across the badge cameras. When someone feels threatened they simply slide aside the main part of the badge to reveal a camera emblem and a yellow sign saying that it is recording.

“The quality of the images is superb. They have been used in court. When young people see the video sign they often stop misbehaving, although some still behave abominably.”

The attempt to tackle hate crime follows published crime statistics which show that hate crimes, and anti-Muslim hate crimes particularly, have increased despite significant under-reporting of such incidents.

But as Hugh Muir in the Guardian observes, the use of technology and law enforcement to curtail hate crimes does not address “the root causes of racism, sexism and discriminatory thinking.”

He writes, “There is a place for law enforcement. It is the place of last resort. And there is a place for technology. It might accord us more time, make us safer, allow us to use finite resources more efficiently. But the role for technology in the conduct of human affairs should not be primary, it should be complementary. Law and technology cannot, even taken together, act as substitutes for the reasonable demand that human beings act decently.

“Merseyside’s cameras may reveal what hate crimes are occurring – and that’s a good thing. But to truly address the problem, we need the will to go deeper and find out why they are.”

It is not the first time cameras have been introduced into frontline services to tackle hate crime. A cab company in Hastings, East Sussex, installed CCTV into cabs after frequent complaints from cab drivers of racist abuse from passengers using the taxi service.