What we have managed to learn so far about the PSNI’s records of the June violence?

In early August PPR submitted an FOI request to the PSNI looking for information on the number and nature of hate incidents or crimes reported in Belfast during the days of targeted violence against people from ethnic minority backgrounds in June.

The PSNI twice claimed costs to reply and PPR twice pared back the information requested. The PSNI then queried the terms used. Finally on 18 September PPR received its first substantive Freedom of Information response (FOI/18499) from the PSNI about the violence committed more than three months earlier.

With regard to reports of hate received by the police in Belfast, the PSNI provided this:

Adding the columns together gives a total of 154 ‘occurrences with a hate motivation’ recorded by the PSNI in Belfast City Policing District between 9 and 14 June 2026.

PPR have requested further information, regarding the geographical locations of the above occurrences and how many of them occurred at Houses of Multiple Occupation. Given the PSNI’s earlier refusal to answer anything but the simplest, most reductive request for information, we did so under two separate follow-up FOIs. The PSNI FOI team immediately signalled the possibility of again claiming costs: 

“as the subject of this request Belfast hate crime incidents is similar to your other request number FOI/18846 and these requests were received by the PSNI within 60 working days of each other, in compliance with Section 12(4) of the Act which states that where more than one request, relating to similar information, is received from one individual, the estimated cost for complying with one of the requests can be taken to be the aggregated cost of complying with all of the requests, as long as the requests are received within 60 working days, these requests have been aggregated for the purpose of a response.”

The PSNI’s dissuasive reaction to requests for further detail regarding the baseline data provided in FOI/18499 about the June violence is concerning, not least because of the additional questions outstanding: for instance, going forward it will be important to understand how many of the above 154 hate-motivated ‘occurrences’ were logged by the PSNI as hate incidents as opposed to hate crimes (see here for an explanation of the difference between the two).  Drip-feeding responses to fair, obvious and straightforward questions about the June events is not transparent – or particularly conducive to public trust.