The City Police and Catalonia’s Mossos d’Esquadra police corps are taking part in a professional meeting at the Municipal LGBTI Centre to revise the European training manual for the police handling of hate crimes. The manual was published in 2017 and is a valuable resource for police instructors, investigators, managers and all other professionals in this sphere in the countries belonging to the Council of Europe.
The goal of the meeting is to revise and update the manual so that it continues to be an important and effective resources given the rise we have seen in hate speech and hate crimes towards LGBTI people. The meeting will analyse the efficiency of the manual and identify elements that need revising or updating, with the collaboration of international experts.
The sessions will analyse statistics for LGBTI-phobic hate crimes; the important concepts relating to sexual-affective and gender diversity; the perspective of non-discrimination and the protection of human rights applied in LGBTI-phobic hate crimes, plus the investigation of these types of crimes and work with civil society organisations.
The participation of the City Police in these sessions will enable its instructors to share their experiences of hate crimes with other police corps and representatives from non-governmental LGBTI organisations, and for all participants to jointly propose improvements in this area.
The meeting has been jointly organised by the Council of Europe and Gaylespol, the National Association of LGBTI+ Police in Spain, and the European LGTBI Police Association (EGPA).
Commitment to the defence of non-discrimination
Coinciding with the 4th European Conference of Gay and Lesbian Police in Barcelona in 2008, the City Police approved the first protocol in the Spanish state to combat discriminatory attitudes and hate crimes.
A specific training platform was also designed to disseminate the protocol throughout the organisation and some specialist training for the Investigation Unit, the Victim Support Service (SAV) and the Neighbourhood Police teams, which act as reference points for citizens and associations with the Barcelona police.
Since then, the content of the protocol has been part of the core training for initial police training with the corps, with all officers taking fixed training of eight hours in this area.
Thanks to this internal training there has been an increase in the detection of discriminatory and hate conduct and proceedings started in connection to sexual diversity. In addition, the Office for Non-Discrimination and the Councillor’s Office for Feminism and LGBTI have made progress in the improvement of comprehensive support for victims of discrimination in the city.