Reported hate crimes rising in Canada. Here's how police investigate and prosecute them

Police-reported hate crime has been on the rise across Canada in the last few years.

Statistics Canada data suggests that in 2017, they spiked by about 47 per cent and increased again in 2019 by seven per cent. That same year, police-reported hate crime targeting Muslims rose by nine per cent.

To help tackle the issue, the federal government hosted two emergency summits last week — one on antisemitism and another on Islamophobia.

Those summits came after four members of a family were killed in a truck attack in London, Ont., while out on a walk June 6, in what police say was an incident motivated by anti-Muslim hate.

In nearby Hamilton, a 40-year-old Cambridge man was arrested earlier this month after allegedly uttering death threats and using racist slurs toward a Muslim mother and daughter. Police have labelled it a hate crime.

Days later, a mosque in Cambridge was severely vandalized in what officials described as an "act of hate," though a police investigation concluded it wasn't a hate crime.

According to a survey from the Angus Reid Institute, about 60 per cent of respondents say they've experienced anti-Asian hate in the last year.

Q&A with WRPS

With the marked increases in such incidents, CBC Kitchener-Waterloo reached out to police experts to ask how hate crimes are investigated, what it takes to prosecute them and what police are doing to ensure they don't happen again.

The Morning Edition's Craig Norris spoke to two members of the Waterloo Regional Police Service: Staff Sgt. Eric Boynton with the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Unit, and Det.-Const. Ernie Friesen with Criminal Intelligence – Gangs and Hate Crime Unit.

Here's what they had to say:

Q: What constitutes a hate or racially motivated crime?

Friesen: "Generally speaking, most crime in our community has a similar motive, which is usually a monetary thing, whether they're trying to recover money or it's addiction-related. But in the case of hate crime, these crimes are motivated generally by a bias or hate. When we have evidence to suggest that that is the cause of a crime being committed or was a significant factor in that crime being committed, then we start considering it to hate elements."

Q: How are these incidents investigated? What are some examples of evidence that you would use?

Friesen: "In a lot of cases, hate crime is very evident to see early on, whether it's graffiti that's of a sensitive nature that immediately identifies it as hate-related, or perhaps if it's something like an unprovoked act of violence.

Generally speaking, things like assaults often have some other contributing factor behind it. But a hate crime doesn't necessarily have readily identifiable motive. So that's a factor we have to look at as well. What started the incident? That can contribute to a hate crime. So things that occur like graffiti, slurs particular to an identifiable group or person … If the incident takes place in relation to, let's say, a religious or culturally sensitive holiday. Those are things we consider as well."

Q: What role does the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Unit play when it comes to these investigations?

Boynton: The team conducts a victim-centred approach to the investigation.

"We see the victim as not only the individual or individuals impacted by a particular crime or occurrence, but also the community around them … After the investigation has been done and often at times throughout it, we will engage with the victim to provide support from community organizations that may have a particular expertise in dealing with that type of thing.

"Also. engage with those who may not at all themselves be involved in the matter, but as you can imagine, these hate-related incidences have a ripple effect to others in the community, and we try to provide that wraparound approach so that the totality of harm can be addressed by what's happened from a variety of avenues."

Q: Data suggests hate crimes are on a rise in Canada. More recently, there have been several targeted attacks against Muslims. How does information like that impact a local police investigation involving a possible hate crime, or does it?

Boynton: This is part of a conversation with his team and a variety of community groups involved in providing supports.

"From my perspective, in the information that I've sort of gathered from them and listening to them, is it may well be the case that it is the reporting of hate crimes that's on the rise versus necessarily a large jump in hate crimes themselves.

"You have a lot of folks that now report hate-related matters happening to them. But then when we engage with them, we find out that this type of thing has happened before. It's just the supports weren't in place, that the trust wasn't in place for them to report those types of things.

"So we're fairly confident now that as we sort of provide different avenues for folks to report these types of crimes, as we sort of engage and get more trust from diverse community groups, that we're going to meaningfully investigate these crimes, and more and more folks are going to come forward, realize that we have a vested interest in providing victims with the support they need, as well as bringing offenders of these types of matters before the courts."

Q: What factors have to be present for police to prosecute hate?

Friesen: "There's three designated hate crimes in the Criminal Code under Sec. 318 and 319. Those have to do with advocating genocide, the wilful promotion of hatred and inciting hatred. If it's not contained under one of those offences, we have to look elsewhere in the Criminal Code and where we find that is 718.2 … which talks about the factors of hate. If they've affected a crime or motivated a crime, they can be used by the Crown for the purposes of sentencing, aggravating sentencing.

"And if an identifiable group in the Criminal Code has been targeted, and we know the we've identified or we have evidence to suggest that the motive is in relation to prejudice, bias or hate, that's when we have to advise these things to the crown as part of the prosecution, and then they can proceed and fulfil their end of the bargain when it comes to prosecution."

Q: What challenges do police services face when they have to investigate and prosecute incidents involving hate or racial crimes?

Friesen: One challenge is remaining unbiased.

"We, as investigators, have to remain unbiased to these circumstances in relation. These things, these incidents, they affect the community in profound ways, whether it's cultural or religious … and we're not blind to that. So, when we launch an investigation, we have to ensure that we are staying unbiased to the circumstances involved or the evidence that's present … It's a huge conversation right now."

Boynton: There's another challenge from his team's perspective.

"When it's not determined that a matter had hate motivation at its root, on my end, it almost doesn't matter … If the victim feels that that's been involved and I need to help provide and connect to that person and the victim with supports accordingly.

"Sometimes it's very difficult to explain to folks who feel as though that hate may be involved in the matter, but after an investigation, we find out that there are other mitigating factors from ... mental health, addictions, homelessness, those types of pieces that often come into play in some of these instances in our region that.

"We want to make sure that we provide those supports to our community, regardless of the criminal charges later."

Q: There are some communities that have fraught relationships with police services. Did you ever have to navigate that?

Boynton: "One hundred per cent.

"The work that our team does every day is to try and figure out how to build upon the good work we've done, but also make sure that we're pivoting and engaging in new and unique ways with the diverse community we serve in order to garner that trust.

"We need to gain trust through our daily activities. To me, trust is something that takes time. ... And so as we engage closely with different community groups and sort of show them how committed we are to getting this right, that over time that will have a cascading effect so that we have not only us engaging with diverse community groups in a sense to have them trust us, but that diverse community leaders … will also be talking to the community saying, you know what, WRPS is committed to these types of things and you can call them and talk to them and they will make a thorough investigation to make sure that the totality of what's happened is uncovered and the appropriate steps are taken."

Q: What role does the police service have then in proactively tackling hate and racially motivated crime in the region?

Boynton: There are many community agencies that have started their own advocacy work around this. For example, more recently, the Coalition of Muslim Women of KW launched an online reporting tool for people who witness or experience incidents of hate or discrimination.

"It's not just the police that a victim of a crime can call in the event that they have that trepidation toward engaging with us. And so as we sort of realize more and more that the community has its own capacity to engage with this type of stuff as well. What we try and do is partner and collaborate so that we have a wraparound approach for folks, because we know that there are some people that they're just not comfortable calling the police, whether it's from an experience they had somewhere else, whether it's an experience they had here, what have you."