Battle for trust in war on hate crime

Speak to any leaders in the Muslim community and they will tell you attacks against Muslims are on the increase.

In August, three men from Grahame Park - two brothers and their father - attacked a Muslim woman on the train. She had her burka pulled off and was spat and sworn at, while her young son was called a suicide bomber. The trio are due to be sentenced next week. This is just one of the handful of crimes that reaches the prosecution stage.

A majority of Islamophobic crimes in the borough go unreported to the police. The reasons are complex and include a fear or mistrust of police, a perception that it won't make a difference and language barriers.

The Jewish community is also being targeted. According to the Community Security Trust (CST), a charitable organisation that tackles anti-Semitism and terrorism, Barnet suffers more anti-Semitic crimes than any other borough in the country - probably because of its large Jewish population.

In August, a 12-year-old Jewish girl was beaten unconscious on a 303 bus in Mill Hill in an anti-Semitic attack. The last thing she remembered before blacking out was someone stamping on her face.

Barnet police figures show that between April and October this year, 52 anti-Semitic crimes were recorded in the borough, while only five were reported against Muslims - an average of less than one a month. Officers believe that while Jewish people are stepping forward to report these crimes, Muslims are not.

Barnet's borough commander, Chief Superintendent Stephen Kavanagh, has introduced initiatives to encourage Muslims who are attacked to come forward. These include posters and leaflets in different languages and giving victims more ways of reporting hate crimes through the internet, fax or phone, anonymously. He also wants to rebuild trust between Muslim communities and the police through the Safer Neighbourhoods Teams.

There is already an established system called third-party reporting, whereby a victim can report crimes to a trusted third party, such as a religious leader, to report the crime on their behalf.

The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 created a new raft of racially or religiously aggravated' offences, covering anything from graffiti to physical assaults. This shows there are laws in place to protect faith groups, but they seem to have had little effect in terms of trusting authority.

Many first-generation Muslims and refugees mistrust the police and the media - which may be down to experiences in their native countries.

Sayed Kadri, general secretary at Hendon Mosque, in Brent View, West Hendon, said: "We have a third-party reporting here. We usually make an announcement and put up notices about it in English, Urdu and Arabic, but people like asylum-seekers are afraid to go to the police. They think they will report them to immigration services.

"As soon as we suggest passing it on the crime report they say: No. We've spoken to you and that's it'."

Mufti Barkatullah is senior imam at North Finchley mosque, in High Road, North Finchley, and was, for five years, the only representative the Muslim community had on a police advisory panel. "Meetings with the police went from monthly to quarterly to as and when." But, he says, under the new borough commander, things are changing. "He is trying to re-establish groups.

"There is heavy scepticism of the police. Muslims do not want to report crimes even when encouraged - there's a lack of faith in the police. But this lack of faith is down to conspiracy theories rather than being based on any real experiences.

"The actual police back in some people's homelands have a different image among the public - their police are a state instrument for the authorities rather than here where they are actually public servants. They do not get the idea that police are independent - it's a cultural perception."

Does he think third-party reporting works? "People in the mosque do it on a voluntary basis and some don't have the time or the energy to put in to it," said Mufti Barkatullah.

"When the police don't get crimes immediately resolved, they lose faith and get disillusioned by it all. They don't think about whether the police can use the information in the future for preventative work."

Bashir Sattar, trustee of the Islamic Association of North London, said: "The media sensationalises Muslim issues so people feel so unsure about what the consequences will be when they do report stuff.

"Jack Straw's comments about the veil have been damaging for the community. It adds to the suspicion that institutions in the country, including the media, police and authorities, have to undermine their religion. You do hear things. I was sworn at, people have their hijabs pulled off, people being spat at at bus stops, but while the authorities acknowledge it, with current attitudes prevailing in the press, Muslims won't come forward."

The Jewish community does not have the same worries about reporting anti-Semitic crimes to the police, and they find the initiatives in place, such as third-party reporting - via the CST mainly - work well.

CST spokesman Mark Gardner said: "There are many cases where Jewish people feel more comfortable reporting incidents to CST, for example verbal abuse, but feel police can't do anything about it.

"But they still feel a responsibility to the community, so it is aware. As a result, more incidents are reported to CST than the police receive.

"We work in conjunction with the police. We share information with them on a monthly basis - sometimes more if we're dealing with a situation.

"People in the Jewish community have confidence in the police and report serious crimes. There is no perception that the police are out to get them or anything negative."

A couple of years ago, Southgate & District Reform Synagogue, in Oakleigh Road South, had its walls daubed in anti-Semitic grafitti, and a year before that it started receiving hate mail.

A spokeswoman for the synagogue said: "We got letters with swastikas all over them. I didn't have any problems with going to the police. They were very sympathetic."

Susan Everett, diversity officer at Barnet police, sits on panels at refugee forums, visits multi-cultural centres and multi-faith groups around the borough and is currently undertaking Barnet police's latest initiative of distributing thousands of leaflets and posters in different languages across the borough.

She said: "We have just published anti-Semitic crime leaflets and are in the process of going to press with Islamic ones. We've also just distributed 10,000 hate-crime bookmarks."

But the police are aware of the barriers that exist in reporting race and faith hate crimes.

"There are language barriers, that's why we have encouraged people in the borough to be third-party contacts," she said. "And if people don't want to come to the police station, they can report a crime online. There's also fax, phone - there's a lot of ways of getting information to us."

She said she's aware of the huge mistrust issues that many refugees have with the police.

"Refugees do not want to report crime because they feel we will question their immigration status. We're trying to say you are here and we will treat you as victims of crime, above your status. In some countries there's no transparency with police forces, and it's hard to get around that fear."

Ms Everett also points out that mosques tend to work largely independently of one another around the borough, yet the synagogues tend to have a unifying force when it comes to reporting crime: the CST.

"It's something that helps," she said. "With mosques, there's no joined-up work, they work independently. With the CST, it makes it easy for people to report to us."

She does point out though, that whether you're Jewish, Muslim or any other faith, there's a massive amount of under-reporting that still goes on.

"Things happen and people think it's too minor to report, but that sort of information might make up the bigger picture and slot into something else. It all helps to increase our awareness.

"If people don't report crime, there's nothing we can do."

The CST can be contacted on 020 8457 9999.