Organizations join together to build online platform to report hate crimes
A handful of community organizations and advocates have teamed up to create an online platform for Hamiltonians to report hate crimes and incidents of hate.
The project is a partnership between the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion (HCCI), Spectrum, Dr. Ameil Joseph and McMaster University’s office of community engagement.
Kojo Damptey, executive director with HCCI, says the idea has been in the works since 2019 — the same year Statistics Canada reported that Hamilton had the most police-reported hate crimes per capita in Canada.
Despite ranking No. 1 in 2018, both Hamilton police and community advocates — including Joseph and Damptey — said hate crimes were likely still “under-reported” in the city.
At the time, Joseph told The Spectator the statistics “represent but a glimpse that captures some of how we understand” the problem.
Det. Paul Corrigan, Hamilton’s hate crime investigative lead, also noted at the time that hate incidents involving LGBTQ victims were going “under-reported.”
Damptey said instead of “complaining ” that hate crimes continue to go “unreported” in the city, the group decided to roll up their sleeves and start to work on a project that would give them the chance to independently track hate crimes and hate incidents.
“When we’re talking about hate crimes, the only numbers we can rely on are what is reported by the police,” Damptey added.
In an email to The Spectator, police spokesperson Jackie Penman said the statistics for 2020 will be released in April once the report is presented to the police services board.
Teaming up with McMaster grad students for research, the group came back with case studies that showed an online platform to report hate crimes worked in other cities.
Damptey said with that analysis in hand, they are now working on setting up focus groups with community members, including those who have experienced transphobia, Islamophobia, racism and anti-Semitism, to find out what they would want to see in the online platform.
Damptey said the group is hoping to “fill the gap” in reporting left by those who may be “not comfortable” going to police, as well as capture incidents that may not have resulted in an assault or damage to someone’s property.
Penman said the force recognizes that victims are “often reluctant to report hate crimes for a variety of reasons, including a distrust of police.”
“We believe the HCCI online portal is one more tool in the collection of hate/bias motivated incidents and/or crimes and will be an important indicator for informing how we can collectively address hate in Hamilton,” she added.
If anything reported is deemed to have any “criminality,” it will also be forwarded to police. Regardless, each incident will be counted, said Damptey.
Damptey said the platform would also be another way of “tackling the atmosphere of hate” in the city alongside the revamp of the Hamilton AntiRacism Resource Centre — whose new 13-member board was approved by council Wednesday.
Details from the reports could be used to inform hate-mitigation policies and education campaigns in the city as well as provide context to hate crime statistics.
Damptey expects the focus groups will run throughout March with a “fulsome report” on the findings coming back to organizers by the end of May. He hopes to see the platform launched by early next year.
“This is something Hamilton desperately needs,” he added.