Commissioner's Statement on Bridlington Hate Incident

“I was disturbed at the content of the email received by my office over the weekend. I’m extremely disappointed that the morons who write such rubbish would actually do something like cut down a flag which represents peace, tolerance and solidarity between all communities.

“This is something I take seriously because in 2018 we still have people who are targeted purely because of who they are, and Pride is about saying that simply isn’t acceptable, yet we get people who hold these views which are on the extreme of reality and they take it out on others.

“We have received so many positive comments from the LGBT community about how supportive Humberside Police and the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner are, so it’s important for us to state that this kind of behaviour is completely unacceptable and I hope the persons responsible are held accountable.

“People who hold such hateful views as expressed in this email are on the extremes of society and they should be confronted and told this is unacceptable. Some people will come back and talk about freedom of speech so let me be clear on one thing, freedom of speech does not mean freedom to hate."