Tool for reporting hate incidents launches in Hamilton, giving residents alternative to contacting police

Hamiltonians who experience hate now have a new way of making sure their experience is recorded in a way that doesn't require interacting with police. 

The Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion (HCCI) and the Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Centre (HARRC) partnered to create WeSupportHamilton.ca, a website for people in the Hamilton area to report incidents of hate, in part because not everyone in the community is comfortable reporting such incidents to police, the groups say.

The website was launched Monday morning during a press conference in front of City Hall. Some council members were in attendance, including Nrinder Nann, Brad Clark and Tammy Hwang. Board members from HCCI and HARRC, as well as Pride Hamilton, the Afro-Canadian Caribbean Association, No Hate in the Hammer and others spoke.

McMaster University professor Ameil Joseph, who helped develop the website, said during the press conference consultations for the project started in 2019, where they discussed, among other things, the protests against Hamilton's Pride event.

"That work in 2019 started with some graduate students in Gender Studies and Feminist Research … looking at online hate-reporting platforms across the globe," he said.

"The ones that are successful at a few particular kinds of components. One was a way to connect people to resources as soon as possible to help people navigate the complex needs that come with experiences again."

The website has no connection with Hamilton Police Services, and the data input in it will be shared only with HCCI and HARRC. It has a tab where users can look at various resources that help with things from therapy and healthcare to employment and reporting a crime to police.

Its reporting tool allows users to input as much or as little information as they want and allows people to report on their behalf or on behalf of someone else.

When reporting, the website also gives users the option to be contacted or not, for further support.

A resource 'from the community'

Sherly Kyorkis, board member at the HCCI emphasized one of the reasons why the website is important is people's distrust in police.

"Police is already fundamentally lacking in terms of just being out of touch, because they're also perpetrators," they told CBC Hamilton.

"Hamilton had the country's highest per capita rate of hate crimes in 2019, 2018, 2016, and 2014. These numbers are only reflective of what is reported to police every year, and we know that many people rightfully do not feel comfortable reporting these experiences."

In 2022, Hamilton saw a 61 per cent increase in hate incidents reported to police, with 174 hate or bias occurrence reports, 26 of which were hate crimes. When Hamilton police published the 2022 data last month, the service acknowledged the true number of hate incidents is "likely much larger" because most are not currently reported.

The recent police report said there may be multiple reasons why people do not report hate incidents to police, including that people could feel like the crime was not important, that it would not result in any action by police, they see it as a personal problem or may even not understand they have been a victim of a hate incident.

Meanwhile, at Monday's launch event, Kyorkis said it's important for the new website to come "from the community" because of the police's treatment of diverse communities.

"Police are always on the opposite side of what we're trying to do as a city in terms of getting rid of hate," they said.

Kojo Damptey, former executive director at HCCI, added that the website removes the need to interact with a police officer and the uncertainty that comes with it. 

"You don't know who the officer responding [is] going to say, whereas now, when you have a platform, it doesn't do all of that. It just says, 'tell us what happened.'"

He encouraged people to report incidents, no matter what it is, so the website can start building data and develop strategies to come up with solutions.