Saskatoon police to tackle hate crimes with designated officer

By Drew Stremick

Saskatoon police are taking additional steps to address increased rates of reported hate crimes in the city.

Police chief Troy Cooper told Gormley on Thursday that in order to tackle the issue, the police would permanently assign an officer to the unit in order to better respond.

“We decided that we would have a specialized unit or an officer that’s connected to other units — like our culture unit, our intelligence unit and our victim’s services unit — be available to be an expert in that area so they can focus on identifying actual hate-related offences, and find out what’s being experienced in Saskatoon, and develop a response to the community that allows us to understand what we’re seeing here and provide a response that’s appropriate,” Cooper said.

Data from Statistics Canada shows that reported hate crimes have been on the rise in Saskatoon since 2016.

That year, just five hate crimes were reported to police. By 2020, the number of reported hate crimes had risen to 17.

Cooper says hate crime in particular is a complicated area of law, so having a dedicated officer who understands the complexity of it helps Saskatoon police find the roots of hate-related issues.

“We’re not just interested in what’s an official hate crime, (but also) what has been motivated by hate, what are people experiencing in our community, and how can we as a police service respond best to that,” he said.

Residents of Saskatoon who are victims of hate crimes are encouraged to call 9-1-1 in the case of an emergency or they can file a report online.