No solution imminent in Quebec City
On Jan. 22, seven days before the mass shooting at a mosque in Quebec City, a young woman in Davis, Calif., broke six windows at a mosque and wrapped strips of uncooked bacon around the handle of the door.
It was a crime eerily reminiscent of an incident six months earlier in Quebec City, when one or more perpetrators left a gift-wrapped pig ’s head at the door of the same mosque, with a sign that said “Bon appétit.” Muslims are forbidden from eating pork.
The difference is that the young woman in California was caught on film, investigated and prosecuted for hate crimes, ultimately spending four months in jail before being released on probation.
An analysis of the woman’s internet browsing history turned up searches for Alexandre Bissonnette and the Quebec City mosque shooting (made before she was arrested in February) as well as praise for mass murderer Dylann Roof and statements about wanting to harm minorities herself.
In Quebec City, on the other hand, police still don’t have any suspects. Not for the pig head incident, not for the defaced Qu’ran or the excrement thrown at the same mosque’s door in two separate incidents since the shooting (and after security cameras were installed).
Not for the torching in early August of the president of the mosque’s car either — a crime police refuse to label a hate crime.
Some believe Quebec City and its police force just aren’t taking hate crimes seriously, despite the escalation of incidents in a city widely seen as the provincial headquarters for anti-Muslim groups. *** According to statistics obtained from the Quebec City police, the number of hate crimes reported in the capital more than doubled in one year, from 25 in 2015 to 58 in 2016.
You wouldn’t know it by looking at the force’s website.
The police have a special phone line for denouncing senior abuse, and a whole department dedicated to the prevention of crimes from internet fraud to the theft of snowblowers — apparently a common occurrence in the capital. But there is nothing on hate crimes.
The only reference to “hate” on the entire Quebec City website falls under its section on “Netiquette”: “it is forbidden to publish offensive content that risks exposing a person or group of persons, a business or a product to hate or contempt.”
Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume has expressed revulsion and shock at the hate crimes perpetrated against the mosque and Quebec City Muslims, while denouncing right- and left-wing extremists.
But since the spring, he has repeatedly dismissed the idea of opening (or funding) a satellite office in Quebec City for the Montreal-based Centre for the Prevention of Radicalization Leading to Violence. He has also said no to establishing a dedicated hate crimes unit within the police force.
“Since Jan. 29, the police have been on top of things and are already sharing intelligence with the RCMP and the SQ,” Labeaume’s press attaché, Paul-Christian Nolin, said Friday. “Major investigations are underway. The mayor doesn’t see the need to have a special (hate crimes) unit.”
So why have there been no arrests in these high-profile incidents?
Haroun Bouazzi, the head of the Association of Muslims and Arabs for a Secular Quebec, said hate crimes should be taken more seriously on all sides.
The Liberal government, in power now for the last three years, should have started an information campaign to denounce racism and Islamophobia — like the “Break the Behaviour” campaign in Ontario. In one video, a Muslim family returns home from the skating rink to find “Muslims go home” spray painted on their garage door. Neighbours come and help them wash it off. In another video, high school kids are telling racist jokes in class — until one of them speaks out.
There should be a mandatory high school course about sexism and homophobia and racism of all sorts, Bouazzi said.
But in the immediate future, police in Quebec City should be better trained to recognize and investigate hate crimes.
“After the attack on the mosque in Quebec City, La Meute (an antiIslam group) went around to all the halal butchers and markets and said, ‘Now it’s war,’” Bouazzi recounted. “The owners called police, but the police never came ... These crimes are not taken seriously.”
Quebec City could learn from the Montreal experience, Bouazzi continued, where a hate crimes unit has existed since May 2016. He himself as been the subject of death threats on numerous occasions. But it was only after the unit was created that his complaints were taken seriously, he said.
Line Lemay, a lieutenant detective with the hate crimes unit, said the number of hate crimes being reported in Montreal, like Quebec City, is still going up.
From January to July 31, 2017, there were 113 hate crimes or suspected hate crimes reported, compared to 137 in all of 2016 (16 per month in 2017, compared to 11 per month in 2016).
The two top categories so far this year have been crimes targeting people for their religion (62) or for their race or ethnicity (31).
But Lemay said she believes it’s not about there being more hate crimes perpetrated, but that there is more trust in the police. The fact of having a dedicated hate crimes unit — with five full-time officers — sends a reassuring message to the community, she said.
The centralized team is also able to connect the dots between noncriminal hate incidents — which are also monitored — and hate crimes across different parts of the city, she said. There were 146 hate incidents reported in 2016.
“It’s to have better knowledge of what is really happening,” Lemay said. “If each complaint goes to a different investigator, we can’t connect the dots. For example, consider the person insulting someone for their religion. That same person may be constantly insulting different people, which at one point becomes criminal harassment. But if we don’t treat the cases together, we can’t know that. This way, we can get a closer look at certain subjects so we can intervene before they commit crimes.”
Out of 137 investigations into alleged hate crimes by the Montreal police in 2016, 52 led to formal charges against the perpetrators.
(Quebec City police did not answer questions Friday about how many of the 58 hate crimes reported in 2016 led to arrests or charges.)
In a statement released Wednesday by the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec about the torching of the president’s car, the mosque said it was time the Quebec public and government take far-right groups in Quebec City more seriously and dedicate the necessary resources to fighting this intolerance and the “neverending hate crimes against Quebec City Muslims.”
“These are no longer simple demonstrations of extremists opposed to immigration. These extremists’ acts are now affecting our lives, the lives of Quebec citizens and Canadian Muslims, as well as our religious and personal property, when the only thing we aspire to is to live peacefully together in this beautiful city,” the statement said.