Over 1000 homophobic hate crimes have been reported in London in the last six months alone

Just days after a gay couple captured a stranger’s tirade of homophobic abuse on camera as they walked through the streets of London, new figures have indicated a worrying rise in the number of hate crimes being carried out in London, at the same time a new report has revealed that up to three quarters of such crimes go unreported.

According the the London Evening Standard, the Metropolitan police have recorded a staggering 1062 incidents of homophobic hate crime in the capital in the last six months alone.

The figure represents an almost 10% increase in anti-LGBT hate crime across the capital compared to the same period last year, when 995 hate crimes were reported.

The news comes as new research from Galop – a support charity for hate crime victims – released this weeks shows that 75% of anti-LGBT crimes are not reported to police, suggesting that the true number of hate crimes carried out in the capital in the last six months could be anywhere up to 4,000.

According to the research, four out of five LGBT people had experienced hate crime, while a quarter had experienced violent hate crime.

A third had experienced hate crime online, while a tenth had experienced sexual violence as part of a hate crime.

The most common reasons victims cited for not reporting homophobic incidents to police were “feeling it would not produce a result, being unsure if it was a crime, and feeling it would not be treated seriously.”

40% of people who did report hate crimes said found the process difficult, “mostly due to the perception that justice professionals had not received training on LGBT issues.”

Most worryingly, 25% said they wouldn’t report a crime again, “mostly due to the feat it would not be taken seriously.”

According to the Independent, Galop said in a hearing with the Home Affairs Select Committee that it has registered a number of explicitly Brexit-related attacks against visibly LGBT people following the referendum result.

Galop hate crime manager Nick Antjoule told the committee on Tuesday (November 15): “We’ve had several people come to us saying that they’d been verbally abused by people saying ‘now we can get these people out of the country and you’re going to be next’ to people who are visibly LGBT. So there’s a very visible link there.”

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