As part of our Take Aim At Hate campaign, we’ve joined forces with local football club, Nottingham Forest.

Nottingham Forest’s Morgan Gibbs-White, along with the rest of the team, have backed our ongoing efforts to root out hate crime from the community.

Forest teammates Anthony Elanga, Andrew Omobamidele, and Naomi Bedeau from the Women’s team joined Gibbs-White in showing their support for our attempts to tackle hate.

Each recorded messages promoting our ‘Take Aim At Hate’ campaign – emphasising the importance of people coming forward and reporting hate crime incidents so action can be taken.

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Nottingham Forest, Notts County and Mansfield Town all signed up to an agreement in 2022 to work in partnership with the police to deal with any hate that occurs at football matches.

This joint approach led to 32 hate crime incidents being reported at matches involving the clubs last season, with various action being taken including three people receiving football banning orders.

A hate crime can be separated into three types – physical assault, verbal abuse or incitement of hatred – and is based on a person’s perceived prejudice towards anyone because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender.

Chief Inspector Craig Berry said: “We’re really grateful to Nottingham Forest and their players for showing their support for our Take Aim At Hate campaign.

“We’re committed to doing everything in our power to try to eradicate hate, so getting this backing from people well-known to our communities and whose words carry so much weight is really impactful.  

“It is so important that anyone who is subjected to a hate crime offence, sees it, or overhears it, reports it to someone, preferably the police.

“As pointed out by the players involved in this campaign, there are numerous ways of doing that, whether that’s letting us know over the phone or online, while we’d encourage people to tell a steward should they hear anything at a match too.

“Each of our county’s three professional football teams have worked closely with us to try and eradicate hate from our communities, and we appreciate their ongoing support.”

If you need to report a hate crime, we are here to help. Please follow the link below on how to report a hate crime:

How to report hate crime | Nottinghamshire Police