London police look for witnesses in hateful graffiti investigation

London police are looking for anyone who may have witnessed a hate-motivated crime at a high school on Trafalgar Street.

Students arrived at B. Davison Secondary School Wednesday morning to find the words “Arabs R Terrorists” and “Gay Fags” spray-painted on the front doors.

Police arrived on scene at 8:30 a.m., and have reassigned the case from the Criminal Investigations Unit to the Street Gang Unit – which is also responsible for investigating hate-motivated crimes.

“Once those investigators have that occurrence and they’ve worked on it and they’ve laid charges, then it would get passed along to a Crown Attorney,” explained Cnst. Sandasha Bough.

“The Crown Attorney would determine whether or not it falls under hate-crime legislation. There’s not a specific hate-crime charge that’s laid, it’s through the legislation itself. It will come down to sentencing.”

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Under the Criminal Code of Canada, a hate crime is committed to intimidate or harm people belonging to a particular group.

READ: Quebec City Mosque shooting: Alexandre Bissonnette charged with 6 counts of 1st degree murder.

Bough says police haven’t released statistics yet for 2016, but in years past there doesn’t appear to be a rise in hate-motivated property damage or crime in London.

“We had 14 cases reported to us in 2013, in 2014 we had ten cases reported to us, and in 2015 we had 14 cases.”

“The entire community is upset about it, nobody wants to see something like that just be spread; it’s very hateful,” said Leila Alma-Way with the National Council of Canadian Muslims.

Alma-Way lives in the neighbourhood, and feels frustrated that young people had to be exposed to such an act.

“It obviously caused a lot of fear and we were told that the students were using the back doors to enter; they didn’t want them to have that be the first thing they look at when they walk in the door.”

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Nawaz Tahir, a spokesman for the London Muslim Mosque, says there’s a sense of unease in the community since the attack on a mosque in Quebec City where six men praying inside were shot and killed. Tahir calls the incident at B. Davison disappointing and frustrating.

“We might not be able to stop these kinds of isolated incidents, but the vast majority of Londoners are great people and we’ve received a lot of community support,” Tahir says. “We saw that publicly after the mosque shooting in Quebec, with a solidarity rally.”

READ: Hundreds of Londoners show support for Muslim community at mosque rally. 

Anyone with information is urged to contact London Police at 519-667-5670 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477). Information can also be sent in online anonymously at www.londoncrimestoppers.com.