PSNI says ‘supporting LGBTQIA communities is an area of focus for police officers’ as it celebrates ‘IDAHOBIT day’

The force yesterday issued a lengthy press release to co-incide with “the International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT)”.

It said: “This awareness day celebrates the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and agender (LGBTQIA) communities globally and raises awareness of the continued work needed to prevent discrimination towards them.

“Supporting the LGBTQIA communities, including both the public and police colleagues, continues to be an area of focus for the Police Service of Northern Ireland who recognises more can and will be done to build trust and confidence within these communities to report to police.”

The Office for National Statistics estimates that roughly 1.2% of people in NI are gay, lesbian, or bisexual; it is not clear how many describe themselves as be transgender or any of the other categories above.

PSNI COMMIT TO CELEBRATING PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO GENDER:

The ‘A’ in LGBTQIA is often used to refer to asexual people – that is, people who have low to zero sex drive.

However the PSNI has taken the ‘A’ to mean “agender”.

The News Letter asked what the PSNI means by this term, and it replied: “A person who is agender sees themselves as neither man nor woman, has no gender identity, or no gender to express.”

The News Letter also asked why it is using the word “queer”, as distinct from “gay”.

It replied: “Queer is an umbrella term to describe the ways people reject binary categories of gender and sexual orientation to express who they are.”

Throughout the press release, the PSNI made reference to both “homophobic and transphobic crimes” and “homophobic and transphobic incidents”.

It did not make clear what the distinction is, though the press release did encourage people to call the police “no matter how small or trivial you think the incident might be”.

Asked about this too, the PSNI issued a statement from Hate Crime Lead Superintendent Sue Steen, saying: “There is no place for hate in Northern Ireland and we take reports of these types of crimes and incidents incredibly seriously.

“We know that hate crime towards the LGBTQIA community is underreported and days like IDAHOBIT provide the Police Service with an opportunity to reach out specifically to members of this community and encourage them to come forward.

“In order to robustly track and respond to hate crime of this kind we need to understand the true extent of its prevalence across Northern Ireland.

“We still have a long way to go until everybody in our community feels safe to live their lives openly and without fear.

“There are still too many LGBTQIA people who are subjected to harmful comments and even violence.

“These hate crimes will not be tolerated and it is up to all not to stand by if we see somebody being affected and to report it to the police.”

FUNDING PRESSURE MAY SPELL ‘STARK CONSEQUENCES’:

All this comes against a backdrop of extreme funding pressure on the PSNI.

In a report to the Policing Board three months ago, the chief constable said that unless this pressure is relieved the force could be “unrecognisable” by 2025.

“The stark reality is that the proposed draft budget allocation falls significantly short of the funding necessary simply to maintain current numbers or service levels,” he said.

“If the proposed budget remains unchanged, it will lead to a smaller police service, providing more limited services and less able to keep people safe.

“The impacts on policing will be stark. Real consequences will be felt in service delivery, resilience and modernisation, with stark choices as to how to prioritise demand and manage risk in the coming years.

“Longer-term impacts include recruitment and representation, the policing response to non-urgent incidents and the investigation of crime.

“Public confidence and victim satisfaction will inevitably be affected.”

He went on to add: “It will not be possible to find adequate savings without significant reductions in staffing, with up to 1,000 fewer police officers in communities by 2025 [out of a total of roughly 7,100 now].”

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