Hey, Calgary! We’re Number One! (…in violently hating people)
Hate pervades Calgary.
Or at least compared to the national average. So says Statistics Canada in a new report.
They provided some facts on the state of hate and violence in Canada:
Among the 220 hate crimes reported by police to be motivated by religion, offences against the Jewish faith were the most common, accounting for almost two-thirds (63%) of religion-based incidents. Another 21% were against Muslims (Islam) and 6% against Catholics.
More than half of all hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation are violent.
More than one-half (56%) of those incidents driven by hatred towards a particular sexual orientation were violent, higher than the proportion of incidents motivated by race/ethnicity (38%) or religion (26%). Common assault was the most frequent type of violent offence.
As a result, incidents motivated by sexual orientation were more likely than other types of hate crime incidents to result in physical injury to victims.
Calgary, perhaps to no surprise for many, beat the national average of 3.1 reported incidents of criminal hate per 100,000 people by almost three times. We lead the country with 9.1 reported incidents per 100,000.
The apologists at the Calgary Herald, used to apologizing for Alberta’s big oil corporatists, were right at home apologizing for perpetrators of hate crimes.
In an unsigned editorial on Wednesday June 11, “Is Calgary a hotbed of hate?” they denied the validity of the Statistics Canada report:
The statistics are also hard to compare, when police forces use different standards of reporting. If one skinhead scribbles offensive comments on two different walls, some forces count it as one offence, others (Calgary, for instance) as two crimes. The latter may be more accurate literally, the former a better measure of the size of the problem.
Second, what is being measured?
A swastika daubed on a synagogue wall is a hate crime.
However, there are shades of grey to some incidents. For example, if one of two straight guys fighting over a girl calls the other man the disparaging term ‘fag,’ for instance, it can be treated as a hate crime. [I can't imagine it would, actually.]
But, clearly it is of a different character than skinheads attacking gay men in an alley.
What ridiculous examples. Yes, police forces use different standards of measurement. That fact might encourage us to reexamine how we classify hate crimes compared to other jurisdictions but not to disregard the results of our current reporting. Is Calgary’s reporting criteria so divergent as to produce a result three times the national average?
Perhaps it is the “high-calibre” policing in Calgary that produced the supposedly inflated number. They write that “vigorous policing will uncover complaints that might not otherwise have been lodged.”
Agreed.
It’s even more regrettable, then, that this city lacks what you might call “vigorous policing.” This is, in part, due to the labour crisis — more collateral damage from corporate oil sands welfare. As skilled security and policing labour is captured by private government-subsidized energy players they abandon public service and policing.
Last year, an officer at the municipal remand centre related his frustration that nearly none of his peers have anything resembling a sociology or criminology degree — unlike in the past. My own experience with the police had them pleading with me not to report an assault I witnessed against a homeless man. “It’s a lot of work to go to court, y’know” was among the tactics employed.
Today, ads on Calgary Transit invite anybody — restaurant server, oil services worker, general contractor — to become a police officer. Respectfully, I don’t consider such a broad and pleading ad campaign to suggest any sense of “vigorous policing.”
Yet, the lack of “vigorous policing” cannot simply be blamed on systemic labour misallocation.
Several gay friends of mine have been victims of hate-related physical violence. None, as far as I’m aware, have moved very far with reporting these incidents. As gay men, it is often a patronizing and demoralizing affair to deal with municipal law enforcement and they choose not to report as a consequence. One friend who attempted to do bring an assault forward was met with, “well, were you coming on to him?”
Under-reporting or encouraging the under-reporting of hate crime is a tragedy, the blame for which falls neatly on our public servants.
The writers conclude, with the blinders I’ve grown so accustomed to seeing them don:
Controlling the situation requires diligent attention, which it appears to be receiving. Alarmist suggestions that an essentially friendly, cordial city hides a substantial and violent sub-culture of hate will, if not substantiated, discredit those making them and hinder a worthy goal.
What is it that makes Calgary an essential friendly, cordial city? StatsCan has data to back up the contrary [to "substantiate it, if you will], where does the Calgary Herald get the “friendly, cordial” data from? Shockingly high suicide rates? A sense of fear identified in their own pages?
As much as the hate crime study and media response might be “alarmist,” the Calgary Herald’s traditional role as apologist remains. In doing so, they perpetuate a dangerous myth that “all is okay”. Defending our three times the national average 9.1 hate crimes per 100,000 is a sickening editorial stance.
Doubtless uncomfortable to identify for the Herald, or for any Calgarian, but — in the aggregate — we remain a bigoted and insular society that has become a global embarrassment and is destined to be a global pariah. Our violence against one another is compounded by our violence against our livelihood and our future. Violence of all forms has become tragically commonplace in our Province — and we’ve not only come to possess a subculture of hate, but to become a culture that tolerates hate.
Serious (and vigorous) action is required by our public actors to make all of our citizens feel safe and, more importantly, to keep them safe.
Apologizing for hate is neither the job of our leaders nor our supposed journalistic stewards.
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Let us watch JUSTICE — STRESS .
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