Riverbend flag theft tabbed as possible hate crime

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This article was published 18/05/2023 (870 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg police confirmed Thursday they are investigating a recent incident at a local elementary school as a possible hate crime.

On the weekend, Riverbend Community School’s Pride flag was torn from its mooring and stolen, with a letter containing homophobic statements and claiming responsibility left behind.

A criminal act against a person or property motivated by hate or bias against a person or a group’s race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability is considered a hate crime. Judges can impose tougher sentences on those convicted of a crime motivated by hate.

The Winnipeg Police Service’s hate crime co-ordinator was not available for an interview Thursday. Police did not respond to submitted questions.

Riverbend’s principal said the school has added at least one surveillance camera to the area from where the Pride flag was taken.

“We review our safety protocols all the time,” Ross Meacham said Thursday. “I would say that we’re reviewing what we have and contributing to keep it robust.”

The principal noted the letter expressing pride in tearing down the school’s Pride flag didn’t threaten to physically hurt anyone.

“It’s a violent act and it’s a hate-filled act and a hurtful act, but if that letter had implied some threat against people, then I think we’d have a bit of a different reaction,” the principal said.

“The threat here is… erasing and silencing people in our community. Our response, as far security goes, is to secure people’s identities. Our response is to secure our sense of community and our care for each other and our diligence in making sure people are OK.”

News of the incident, coupled with the recent theft from a Riverbend classroom of 17 books about Indigenous and LGBTTQ+ experiences, has spread. Rather than feeling exposed and vulnerable, Meacham said the school feels supported.

“We have had an overwhelming response of support from across the country. Every single message I’ve got at the school is one of ally-ship and support,” he said. “People want to come in and help us out.”

Prairie Sky Books in Winnipeg is giving the school a $100 gift card and offering customers 10 per cent off books purchased to donate to Riverbend to help replenish its supply promoting inclusion and diversity.

“It was just a really saddening thing to hear that that had happened,” shopkeeper Emily Lawrence said at the Wolseley neighbourhood store Thursday.

“We just really want to support kids being able to be themselves and being supported in their school. We want to help teachers accomplish that. That is important to us.”

Such support is crucial, agreed University of Manitoba law Prof. Donn Short.

“Students are aware of and discussing queer kids, even in the earliest grades,” he said Thursday. “This is the unofficial curriculum of schools that teaches negativity and hatred in hallways and school yards.

“That is why it is so important for the official curriculum and official spaces of schools to contain (LGBTTQ+) content, to work against what is otherwise being taught already,” said the associate dean.

“The person who took the flag would have benefited from going to the kind of school they oppose.”

In Canada, the number of hate crimes reported by police increased 27 per cent to 3,360 in 2021, from 2,646 in 2020, Statistics Canada reported in March.

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Hate crimes targeting a given religion, sexual orientation and race or ethnicity accounted for most of the reported increase, StatsCan said.

“There’s an incident like this every few days,” said Evan Balgord, Canadian Anti-Hate Network executive director. “In B.C., there were 51 far-right events in April — half targeting LGBTTQ+, mostly around materials that affirm the existence of queer people.”

School boards across Canada are reporting delegates making homophobic and transphobic presentations, similar to the book ban pitch that made headlines in Brandon earlier this month, “flooding the space with hate and misinformation,” Balgord said.

Far right groups in this country — often influenced by U.S. media — target the vulnerable and those they feel may not have broad public support, Balgord added.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.