Officers kept tabs on protests outside Scots hotels housing asylum seekers in Falkirk, Perth, Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, so hate crimes were “identified and dealt with appropriately”.
Police Scotland officers.(Image: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire.)
Police deployed covert “hate crime spies” to monitor anti-immigrant protests in Scotland nearly 150 times last year, it can be revealed.
They kept tabs on protests outside Scots hotels housing asylum seekers in Falkirk, Perth, Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, so hate crimes were “identified and dealt with appropriately”.
Data shows Police Scotland deployed plain clothes “hate crime advisers” on 140 occasions to obse-rve protests, monitor chants and flag comments deemed offensive.
Police Scotland(Image: Stuart Vance/ReachPlc)
It also emerged doubled the number of hate crime “spotters” to more than 100, after running seven training courses across the country last year.
They are specially trained to pick up on “trigger phrases” and behaviour, able to feed intelligence back to command units in real time, with officers effectively acting as on-the-ground informants.
The move is part of a crackdown on offenders spouting abuse, including racial or religious slurs.
Police Scotland said the majority of asylum protests were held in Forth Valley, North East, Tayside and Greater Glasgow divisions but only Forth Valley and Greater Glasgow recorded increases in hate crime.
It revealed “community relations specialists” have also been deployed to support local policing and communities in a bid to calm public unrest amid rising tensions over the influx of illegal migrants, working closely to build cohesion and defuse tensions.
Some communities have raised concerns about public safety following reports of sexual assault cases in which suspects were identified as asylum seekers.
It comes as data shows racial offences are rising, making up more than 60 per cent of all hate crimes in Scotland, with 4531 recorded between April and December, an increase of more than nine per cent.
A total of 7212 hate crimes were recorded during the period, a rise of almost six per cent, compared with the same period last year.
According to Police Scotland, crimes overall against asylum seekers housed in hotels increased last year to almost 160.
A total of 103 incidents were recorded between January and June, increasing to 159 from July to December. They recorded 43 hate crimes at hotels housing asylum seekers, 33 of which were said to have been racially aggravated.
Other hate offences for age, disability, sexual orientation, religion, transgender and variations in sex characteristics made up 3142 of the total number during the period.
Amnesty International last month issued fresh demands that Police Scotland abandons plans to explore the use of live facial recognition technology on Scotland’s streets, describing the technology as “incompatible” with Scotland’s human rights obligations.
Officers have also been issued with body-worn cameras and the force has a fleet of about a dozen hi-tech “spy in the sky” drones.
Police Scotland said: “Hate crime advisers are deployed to events where there is a likelihood of hate crimes or non-crime hate incidents that may be more complex.”