Another HOMOPHOBC HATE CRIME incident in Cornwall

Cornwall has a long way to go under the current Devon & Cornwall Police Chief Constable before Cornwall becomes a HATE CRIME FREE ZONE for gay people!

YESTERDAYanother HATE CRIME incident in Cornwall: 19th March 2008

Homophobic motivated intimidation, abuse & threats of physical violence are a ‘Hate Crime’, but not if you live in Cornwall.

The worrying aspect for gay victims are additional abusive, conduct attitudes & practises of the Cornwall police. Receiving honest, fair, & impartial treatment as a gay person from police in Cornwall is a risky lottery.

Yesterday, Wednesday 19th March 2008, a man & his girlfriend visited the Penzance place of works of a young gay person and the male antagonist made a threat of physical violence to ‘break the legs’ of yet another gay man known to the gay person the threat was made too. Unfortunately, work premises CCTV cameras, which may have caught the incident normally, were not operative that day. The incident reported to the management and the incident logged.

The threatening male, (whose identity is known), made a complaint against the gay employee designed to cause the gay person intimidation, further concern & trouble. The gay victim felt extremely threatened by the incident and equally concerned for the safety & welfare of the other gay man against whom the male had threatened to “break his legs.

This sort of homophobic motivated hate crime is all too common and seldom reported, but is it even worth reporting to the HOMOPHOBIC Cornwall police?

As in Cornwall that may simply result in further gay victimisation from the police themselves?

Gay community intelligence is aware of the identity of the threatening male. The same threatening male is known to have previously made an allegation to police & a police statement of having been shown ‘child pornography & gay porn’ in the possession of and on the lap top computer of a then 17yr old gay youth from Helston. Ironically, it is also alleged that the 17yr old youth had allegedly used to be the threatening males casual boyfriend.

Raising a question is there some sort of internalised self-loathing of his (the antaganist male) latent homosexuality going on with this male who made the threats.

However, this is far more sinister. The mother of the threatening male has issues with gay persons. The mother has previously spread false allegations of known gay persons having HIV/AIDS, when they did not. The mother, even referring to it in a police written statement. The mother has made false allegation against a gay man based upon her homophobic stance. The mother has also screamed homophobic abuse in the streets and is alleged to have colluded with another in making false allegation of a very serious sexual nature against a gay person.

The problem is the police response in Cornwall to vulnerable gay persons is a lottery at which gay people are likely to be further victimised and expose themselves to genuine further risk from the endemic culture of homophobia within the Cornwall police force:-

# Cornwall police have previously expressed in writing that the spreading of false allegation a person had HIV/AIDS was according to Cornwall police NOT harassment.
# Cornwall police also expressed in writing that homophobic abuse screamed in the streets was NOT homophobic harassment.
# Cornwall police have previously threatened legal action to prevent a local lgbt community newsletter from raising concerns about the high levels of homophobic police conduct in Cornwall.
# Cornwall police have consistently refused to investigate a catalogue of HOMOPHOBIC incidents carried out by Cornwall police officers.
# Cornwall police also REFUSED to interview an adult gay eye-witness to an attempted blackmail of a gay person last year. The police officer involved then targeted the gay victim with vehicle stop.
# More recently, two police officers threatened two gay businessmen in Plymouth.

This latest incident this week of threats of physical violence towards gay persons in Cornwall…if reported to the Cornwall police would inevitably simply lead to yet further intimidation & homophobic conduct from Cornwall police officers towards the gay persons concerned.

This information HAS been forwarded to the Cornwall LGBT Diversity team….But Do Not Hold your breath that they will respond as they have previously chosen to blind eye SO MANY homophobic activities of Cornwall police officers.

It’s a lose-lose situation for gay people in 2008 in Homophobic Cornwall under this Chief Constable, Mr Otter.