Drawing a line on hate crimes

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/07/2022 (1327 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Nearly a year after Fiona Zhao’s Asian beauty boutique was one of several Pembina Highway businesses vandalized with spray-paint graffiti including swastikas, she is still confused as to why the incidents were not deemed a hate crime.

“I don’t feel that it’s not Asian hate, because 80 per cent of the businesses that got vandalism (that night), it was Asian businesses,” said the owner of Unique Bunny.

This week, the Winnipeg Police Service released its annual crime report, showing incidents of hate crimes went up by 46.2 per cent in 2021 from 2020. Cases involving race/ethnicity was the most reported crime at 53 per cent, followed by religion at 39 per cent, and sexual orientation at eight per cent.

Sixty-five per cent of those crimes involved mischief (including graffiti), 24 per cent were violent crimes, and eight per cent involved hate propaganda. In total, there were 38 recorded hate crimes in 2021, compared to 26 in 2020.

Under the Criminal Code of Canada, hate crimes include the promotion of genocide, public incitement, and wilful promotion of hate against an identifiable group.

Winnipeg Police Service Sgt. Josh Ewatski said investigators must locate the intent behind an incident for it to be deemed a hate crime. Many that are reported do not end up being classified as such, he said.

“If there are no other indicators other than the fact that there’s a swastika spray-painted on the side of the garage, we can’t say definitively, ‘Well, that’s a hate crime or hate-related offence,’” Ewatski said.

Barbara Perry, director of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa, said the data from the WPS annual report doesn’t reveal the full picture. Less than one-quarter of hate crimes are reported to police in Canada, she said.

According to the most recent Statistics Canada data, 21.7 per cent of self-reported incidents of hate were reported to police in 2019.

There are numerous reasons why potential victims might not report incidents to police. Ewatski believes this is due to a combination of unawareness around what constitutes a hate crime, as well as worries about further victimization.

Many are Black, Indigenous and LGBTTQ+, who may be more reluctant to file a report, Perry said.

“These are communities that have not had historically good relationships with law enforcement. There’s a real broken trust there,” Perry said. “What I hear from communities is that it’s not just they’re over-policed, which they are in terms of heightened surveillance, but also under-policed, as in law enforcement is less likely to take seriously their victimization.”

A report published by the Globe and Mail in March, using Statistics Canada data from 2013-20, showed Winnipeg had the lowest hate-crime clearance rate (cases solved by charging a perpetrator) of the 13 largest municipal and regional police forces in Canada: six per cent.

In comparison, assaults had a clearance rate of 58 per cent, the Globe reported.

Ewatski said hate crimes tend to have a lower clearance rate for a variety of factors, including a lack of information about potential suspects.

“A lot of it is random — so trying to identify a suspect when it’s just this one offence, the suspect is not known to the victim, it’s a little harder to solve sometimes,” the WPS officer said.

Perry said police services across Canada must establish more efficient and effective hate crime units to hold perpetrators accountable. Taking such events seriously and not being dismissive of concerns is necessary to ensure more individuals report hate-motivated incidents to law enforcement, she said.

One Winnipeg restaurant owner (who wished to not be named for fear of retaliation) faced an instance of hate-motivated vandalism last year. They were targeted in multiple racially motivated incidents, including a vulgar message written in mud on the hood of their car.

They moved the business to a location at a different end of the city and amped up security.

“We need to bring the awareness. We’re all here together as Winnipeggers,” the owner said. “We just have to be more cautious as small businesses, and maybe put more cameras and just pay attention.”

Despite receiving an outpouring of support from other area businesses after the 2021 graffiti incident, Zhao said she continues to receive hateful, racist messages about masking requirements at her store.

“A lot of things happened the last two years, and (it) makes us feel uncomfortable, for sure,” she said.

cierra.bettens@freepress.mb.ca