City police are investigating after two people were caught on surveillance video ripping down a rainbow flag hanging outside east London’s Aeolian Hall and stuffing it into a nearby sewer.
According to a brief post Thursday on the venue’s Facebook page, the incident occurred around 1 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 27 on the Dundas Street side of the building.
Surveillance video attached to the Facebook post shows two men walking west on Dundas Street in front of the venue. One of the men can be seen jumping up to grab the flag, pulling it and the flagpole down to the ground.
The two continue to walk westbound down Dundas. As they cross Rectory Street, the man turns around and walks back to the flag, picking it up and removing it from the flagpole.
As the first man does this, the second man can be seen pointing to a nearby sewer grate. The second man lifts the grate as the first man drops the flag into the sewer.
“It wasn’t so much that they saw the flag and tore it down but what they did afterwards,” Aeolian Hall executive director Clark Bryan told AM980 on Friday, “but to actually lift the culvert on Dundas Street and shove it down into the sewers.”
Clark added that he has concerns about an increase in expressions of homophobia in London, noting he’s never seen anything like this in 14 years with the venue.
“This year we’ve had a lot of social media homophobic comments and I did a presentation at the RiverBend Golf and Country Club on behalf of the Aeolian… a Trump supporter came up and attacked me vehemently afterwards.”
London Police are investigating the incident but Const. Sandasha Bough confirmed to AM980 it’s being looked at as a case of property damage.
“After a charge is laid, what happens is it gets reviewed to determine whether or not there’s any type of hate or biased motivation behind the act itself. Then a Crown Attorney would take a look at that particular charge and decide whether or not it falls under hate crime legislation.”
Bryan added that in the meantime, a new flag will be going up.
“It’s going to be a symbol of a conversation that we need to have all the time in the city about diversity.”
It comes roughly a month after a Pride flag was torn from a pole and burned with cigarettes in Wortley Village during London’s Pride week, prompting an investigation by the London police’s Hate Crime Unit.
– With files from Jacquelyn LeBel