Last Friday CBC’s Samantha Craggs published a story about the Hamilton Police Service’s post-Pride analysis; apparently she’d gotten a copy of a document called “The Way Forward“, outlining the response to “concerns raised by members of the LGBTQ at a meeting in August.” Along with a great deal of pious insincerity about how “[The HPS] is committed to self-reflection — words matter” and how they “must consider the impact of its words, active listening and working towards restoring trust” the document proposes an “action plan” for the HPS to improve their relationship to the LGBTQ+ community in Hamilton, including several specific recommendations:
– The creation of an “online portal” to educate the general public about hate crimes.
– Implementing “more officer training.”
– Resurrecting the long-defunct LGBTQ+ advisory committee.
– Appointing a uniformed officer to be an “official liaison” with the LGBTQ+ community
To me, what’s notable about this “action plan” is the complete lack of action. Let’s look at each of these points: First, creating a “web portal” about how not-nice hate crimes are. What, does the HPS have a high school intern working for them this semester? Everybody — especially everybody in the LGBTQ+ community in Hamilton — knows how bad hate crimes are. We damned well ought to know, since they happen so goddamn frequently. Adding a page to the Hamilton Police Service website (which few people look at anyway) is busywork, nothing else.
Implementing more officer training? That’s a bitter joke… as well as being an open admission that there’s a culture of homophobia within the force. “More training” isn’t going to mean that the cops are going to be provided with some kind of touching, prime-time syndicated epiphany about how traumatic the lives of LGBTQ+ people are; they’ll get a watered-down powerpoint presentation that they won’t bother to listen to. If HPS officers don’t understand that being dismissive of (if not downright hostile to) LGBTQ+ activists and their concerns is a bad thing, paying some consultant tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to jolly the cops along isn’t going to help. The officers in question will roll their eyes, sit through whatever briefing or workshop they’re being paid overtime to attend, and go back to their jobs with just that little bit more resentment towards LGBTQ+ folks for having their time wasted.
As for re-implementing the advisory committee, if the cops had given a damn about the committee in the first place it never would have gone defunct. My understanding from people familiar with the old advisory committee’s work is that it was largely ignored by the police except when the committee was called upon to rubber-stamp some bullshit PR program, and that the committee itself grew so frustrated at their impotence and irrelevancy that they stopped trying. A resurrected LGBTQ+ advisory committee, existing under the same terms as the original advisory committee, is already completely useless and doomed to failure. In fact, it’s worse than useless because it’s a red herring and will exist only as a distraction and an excuse to foist the responsibility of improving relationships off of the HPS and onto a committee of well-meaning community volunteers. Let me make it clear: It is not the LGBTQ+ community’s fault this relationship with the police is so poor, and it’s sure as hell not the responsibility of the LGBTQ+ community to fix the problem. This is gaslighting, pure and simple.
And finally, the appointment of a uniformed officer as an “LGBTQ+ liasion” is just insulting. A dedicated liaison to the LGBTQ+ community will do very little except improve the ability of the Hamilton Police Service to identify and arrest LGBTQ+ activists on completely bullshit charges after the next round of violence committed against us. Whatever individual officer tapped to hold this job might be entirely well-meaning and sympathetic to the LGBTQ+ community… but if there’s one thing we’ve learned during Hamilton’s “Summer of Hate” its that the HPS itself is emphatically not. Any work done to make the current incarnation of the HPS “closer” to the LGBTQ+ community will, ultimately, be used against that community. Period.
As it exists today, the Hamilton Police Service has an antagonistic relationship with the LGBTQ+ community, with left activists, and with progressives generally. And not one of the recommendations of The Way Forward will do a damned thing to change things because it isn’t an action plan, it’s just wallpapering over the cracks.
The HPS isn’t serious about improving relations with the LGBTQ+ community. I remind you that at the very moment the public meeting which “produced” this report was going on, activist Cedar Hopperton was sitting in jail after being arrested for… well, the official story on what they were jailed for changed repeatedly over the course of the summer but whatever the stated reason, it’s clear that they were being punished for being insufficiently respectful to the police during an earlier public meeting in June. While that meeting was going on, HPS officers were harassing and arresting LGBTQ+ people across the city. And shortly after the meeting which produced The Way Forward occurred, Police Chief Eric Girt went on a bizarre homophobic rant against the LGBTQ+ community during a radio interview.
There is no trust, no trust at all, for the Hamilton Police Service in the LGBTQ+ community. The HPS spent years pissing away that trust even before their appallingly unprofessional conduct during the Pride attack in June. The HPS’ so-called response — to arrest and persecute the victims of the attack — was the final betrayal of the community and any relationship of “trust.” The fact that it took enormous public pressure to arrest Chris “Helmet Guy” Vanderweide for his part in the violence (a part which was recorded by numerous people and which he openly boasts about online) as well as the absence of arrests against other Pride attackers despite similar evidence tells the LGBTQ+ community in Hamilton exactly why we shouldn’t trust the police… a point recently reinforced by the HPS’ triumphant announcement that they’d arrested and charged three (now four) victims of far-right violence at the September 29th protest of the PPC at Mohawk college.
No, it’s clear the HPS isn’t serious about rebuilding trust with the LGBTQ+ community. If they were, they’d take some serious actions instead of this “make it all go away” public relations bullshit.
Allow me to suggest some actions that would actually demonstrate their seriousness: Drop all charges against the Pride defenders and make some arrests against the violent hate groups… the same people that documented their own assault on Pride. Take some actual steps to curtail the weekly demonstrations of homophobia and hate on the City Hall forecourt, including charging the people who have physically assaulted counter-demonstrators. Make a full and formal apology for the failure to defend Pride and a commitment to preventing future attacks on LGBTQ+ events, including establishing an anti-hate task force which will monitor the hate groups’ violent threats… then follow through on defusing that violence before it happens.
But the single most important first step the HPS could take in rebuilding trust is simple and it can be done today: Get rid of Chief Eric Girt. He is either incompetent or motivated by malice towards the LGBTQ+ community… or both. In a sensible world, he would have resigned after the HPS’ humiliating public failure at Pride. Failing that, he should have been removed after his homophobic public rant this summer. Clearly, Girt is a huge part of the problem: His lack of leadership, his victim-blaming and above all his blatant homophobia is a clear indication as to why the Hamilton Police Service treat the LGBTQ+ community the way they do: The fish rots from the head; Girt needs to go. He can resign or be fired, but until this action is taken there is no question that the HPS cannot — and should not — be trusted by the queer community… and his continued presence is a clear statement the HPS doesn’t really care whether they we trust them or not, because their protection is not for us.
But of course, Girt will remain Chief of Police simply because the HPS isn’t serious about making changes. The Way Forward merely clearly demonstrates that, aside from being publicly criticized, the HPS perfectly happy with the way things are going. And in Fred Eisenberger’s city hall (not to mention Doug Ford’s Ontario) there’s no one in power who’s willing or able to hold them to account. Which means that the Hamilton Police Service simply can’t be trusted to protect the LGBTQ+ community… and that a repeat of the violence at the 2019 Hamilton Pride festival is not only likely, it’s inevitable.
