Hate crimes spike in Hamilton, police report reveals

Community leaders in Hamilton say they’re troubled by a report from the city’s police this week.

The police released figures showing a sharp increase in the number of hate crimes and incidents in the city.

There are fears that the people behind the incidents are organized and preparing for even worse.

A store on Barton Street East was just one of the places hit by racist graffiti this month.

Store owner Reena Rampersad says it’s disappointing but there’s nothing new about it.

“I’ve gotten used to it. We like to think there’s no racism in this country. I was born here and I’ve dealt with it my entire life,” Rampersad says.

At a summer crawl event in Hamilton on Saturday, Lee Smith says he’s been impacted by hate, like the time he was pepper sprayed for no reason by a pedestrian as he was driving.

“I think this is also based on a lot of different groups that are coming in now. The mixture of people is just creating havoc sometimes. Not everybody’s nice,” Smith says.

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The Hamilton Police Service says figures from 2024 show 297 hate or bias incidents.

That’s a 35 percent increase from the year before.

They say 157 of the incidents were racial, half against Black people.

Seventy-two focused on sexual orientation and gender identity and 66 on religion, mostly against Jewish people.

The police say the increase in the numbers may reflect “growing community trust in reporting” hate incidents, but also say “despite the increase, hate crimes remain underreported.”

There’s concern the figures also reflect a changing nature of hate.

“There are groups that are practicing and preparing for what they would call a race war and that gives people I think an opportunity to understand that these incidents of hate aren’t isolated but that there are coordinated groups that are actively pursuing ideology of hate in our community,” says Lyndon George, the Executive Director of the Hamilton Anti-Racism Resource Centre.

“The demographics of those groups have definitely changed. They are intentionally and actively pursuing that type of a lifestyle and are committed to creating hate and isolation and exclusion,” Rampersad says.

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For the groups targeted, the impact is horrendous.

“We really feel isolated. We feel that we don’t have the protection that we need,” says Gustavo Rymberg from Hamilton’s Jewish Federation.

“Emotionally for a lot of people it’s difficult to live a Jewish life that they want to live. For some people it’s hard to go to the Synagogue. It’s hard to attend community events.”

“The impact is fear, that’s what the impact is, fear,” says Deirdre Pike the Principal Facilitator of Queer Positive Power.

Pike says the increase in reporting hate incidents is a positive result of police efforts to build trust.

“There has been a real effort to increase trust in the community and the conversations with the LGBTQ people and I’ve seen a liaison officer for the LGBTQ community out and about and present and the police are working hard to be present in the right way,” Pike says.

She says the bad news is that there’s a political climate that gives people permission to hate.

The community leaders say this kind of hate is not just a problem for any one community, but for society as whole.

They say people have to be aware this is happening and stand together to stop it.

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