Poster, 'Hands Up To Stop Hate Crime'

ID: This poster with a white background features the title ‘HATE: Disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender, there’s no room for hate’. It goes on to read ‘Merseyside Police Summer of Action’. The poster’s main slogan is ‘Hands Up To Stop Hate Crime’. To the right of this, there is an illustration of silhouettes of five hands reaching upwards. The hand silhouettes are made up of various job titles from within the police service, including ‘PCSO, analyst, officer, call handler, detective, dog handler, secretary, special constable’. This poster was produced by Merseyside Police as part of their Summer of Action initiative in 2013. It encourages various branches of police service workers to come together to fight against hate crime. Hate crime is classed as any crime that has demonstrated or been motivated by hostility based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity. In 2023, 13,777 instances of hate crime where a person had faced discrimination based on disability were recorded by police in England and Wales. Disability hate crimes are often under-reported for many reasons. These can include lack of awareness of what constitutes hate crime, how to report it, or how to support people to report their experiences. Advocacy groups, charities and organisations promoting disability rights continue to campaign to raise awareness of how to identify and report these offences, as well as supporting victims, their families and those around them.