Charlottesville, Va. violence shows little impact in Edmonton, but the Edmonton Police Service is monitoring the situation.
Sgt. Gary Willits, with the EPS Hate Crimes Unit, told iNews880, there hasn’t been a big increase in reported incidents since the Charlottesville violence, but they are watching things in Edmonton closely.
“Anytime anything happens around the world, especially to our neighbours to the south, it definitely affects our communities,” explained Willits. “We know that, we recognize that but, at this point, we haven’t noticed anything measurable for us.”
Willits said they are seeing similar numbers to last year right now.
“I’m looking at our stats, January to the end of July, we’re sitting at 80 incidents the Edmonton Police Service has investigated,” explained Willits. “Twenty-four of those have been actual hate crimes and 56 were hate incidents.”
In 2016, there were 128 hate-related incidents reported.
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Statistics Canada released numbers on hate crimes from 2015 recently, which showed a 39 per cent jump in Alberta, with 193 incidents reported.
Edmonton saw the biggest increase in incidents among Canada’s largest cities, with 45 more incidents in 2015 than 2014.
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The majority of the incidents are targeted at the LGBTQ community.
“Being that Canada is built on immigration – unless you’re indigenous, we’re all families of immigrants – people have a greater understanding of living in harmony and making a stand when they see something improper going on,” remarked Willits. “We really, as the Edmonton Police Service, we really count on the community to step forward and make it a safe community.”
Willits has some advice for anyone who sees a hate incident happened first-hand.
The EPS has training for all front line members in hate incident related policy and procedure. The Hate Crimes Unit has three full time members that investigate cases and provide support to other departments.
The Alberta Hate Crimes Committee, which was set up to clear up confusion between hate crimes, hate incidents and provide resources, continues to look into and track hate related incidents in the province.
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