Merseyside not to follow Notts Police in making cat-calling a hate crime

After the recent news that Nottinghamshire Police have become the first authority in the country to officially recognise misogyny as a hate crime, Merseyside Police have said that they will not be doing the same.

A spokesperson from Merseyside Police told The Tab: “We’re not going to be treating misogyny as a hate crime under its own label. If we get reports on the misogynistic route we will take every report and investigate it, it will just be classified under a ‘hate crime’ generally.

“We’re not going to be introducing it as we want to encourage people to come forward whatever their gender, whatever the sex of the abuser is and encourage everyone to come forward and report the harassment to us.”

Nottinghamshire Police announced last week that they shall now be recording incidents such as wolf whistling, street harassment, verbal abuse and taking photographs without consent under the hate crime definition.

In May of last year, over 16,000 women from across 22 countries were surveyed by anti-street harassment group Hollaback! A shocking 90% of the British women who were surveyed claimed their first experience of harassment occurred before the age of just 17.