Diverse communities hope to be better represented on Hamilton Police Services Board

The president of the Afro Canadian Caribbean Association says upcoming appointments to the Hamilton Police Services Board must be made through an “equity lens.”

Evelyn Myrie is hoping for a board that better reflects Hamilton’s diversity, as the city prepares to name two new councillors and a citizen appointee to the seven-member board.

Myrie says “dysfunction” between the current board members and “tensions” between police and the African-Canadian community, in particular, are “troubling” and she adds that we must “bridge that gap.”

Myrie has specific candidates in mind for the citizen opening, ahead of a Nov. 30 deadline for applications.

She says there is “one professor in particular” and “other community business people” whom the group is urging to put their names forward for consideration.

Myrie says the bottom line, for all boards and agencies, is that “the people who serve us and our community, must represent the people who live in our community.”