Man jailed for hitting Muslim woman in the face with bacon

‘This was a truly shocking incident’ says DC James Payne

A man who abused two Muslim women before striking one of them in the face with a packet of bacon has been jailed.

Alex Chivers made abusive comments to a Muslim teen, who was walking down a road in Enfield, north London, with her mother on 8 June.

After calling her “Isil scum” and shouting “you deserve this”, he then struck her in the face with an open packet of bacon.

“The victim was not injured, but was very distressed,” Scotland Yard said in a statement.

Chivers, of nearby Waltham Cross, was arrested six days later and charged with one count of racially or religiously aggravated common assault and one count of causing racially or religiously aggravated alarm or distress.

After pleading guilty at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court, he was sentenced to 26 weeks’ imprisonment for the assault and 12 weeks’ imprisonment for a public order offence – to run concurrently.

Calling the incident “truly shocking”, DC James Payne from Enfield Community Safety Unit, said other people were present at the time of the assault, “including an associate of Chivers’ who filmed the incident”.

He added that enquiries were ongoing to try to identify them.

London’s Metropolitan Police said that hate crimes of this type remain “largely under reported”, adding that it “stands together with policing partners, colleagues and groups to investigate all hate crime allegations, support victims and their families, and bring perpetrators to justice”.

Police figures released in March, showed a considerable rise in hate-related crime in London over the previous year.

The number of victims of religious and racist hate crime had risen by almost 20 per cent, from 14,004 to 16,618, and victims of faith hate have seen an 18 per cent increase from 1,699 to 2,000.

Homophobic incidents had also increased by 12 per cent, from 1,816 to 2,033, while the number of disability hate victims increased by 216 per cent in the last year alone, up from 251 in 2015/16 to 794 in 2016/17.

In February, it was revealed that the number of hate crimes recorded by regional police forces rose by up to 100 per cent in the months following the Brexit vote.