THUNDER BAY — City police received a total of 23 reports of crimes or other incidents motivated by hate or prejudice in 2024, according to data presented to the Thunder Bay Police Service Board on Tuesday.
Of those, the report said, 11 (or 48 per cent) were directed at the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
“We have seen these and we do follow up on every one of those reports and unfortunately some of the cases that we're seeing is they're originating outside of the area,” police chief Darcy Fleury told reporters at the board’s Tuesday meeting.
“So, we are seeing some of this happening but, again it is thoroughly followed through.”
Some Story Time with Thunder Bay Drag Queen events at the Thunder Bay Public Library have been targeted by threats, prompting police a response and investigations.
That was done “to make sure there's the safety of the people in the library, people that are attending the event, and just overall, community safety in general,” Fleury said.
The report also showed five incidents were directed towards Jewish people (22 per cent), three each targeted Muslim and Black people (13 per cent each) and one was directed towards an Indigenous person (four per cent).
The report acknowledged people may not report instances to police due to fear, humiliation or a desire to deal with the matter themselves, but added that “raising awareness of hate-motivated crimes and incidents means building our capacity to address this issue together.”
Fleury said he wants people who feel they’ve been targeted to report it to police.
“I do request and I always ask in the meetings that I have, is that if people are being targeted or people are feeling vulnerable that they report to us,” he said.
“That's really important that we have that so that we can, if anything, take some action if needed.”
The report broke the total number down into 18 “hate/bias crimes” and five hate/bias-motivated non-criminal incidents. The latter, the report said, “is a non-criminal action or behaviour that can include any incidents that involves hate or bias towards any member of the public because of race, religion national or ethnic origin, language, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.”
“These incidents cannot be proven to have been motivated solely or in part because of the person’s bias/prejudice towards the victim but include some type of hateful overtones.”
The number is roughly the same as it was the year before, when twenty-two total incidents were reported to police.
During the meeting, Coun. Kasey Etreni, one of two city council representatives on the police board, wanted to know if anything is being done about education or prevention.
“We work with the various communities, the different societies on what they should be doing as far as awareness and some prevention pieces,” Fleury said in response. “The conversation has been initiated probably in the last year or so.”
