“There is no place for racism in this community.”
That’s the message from RCMP Insp. Adam MacIntosh, who held a media conference on Tuesday to address three high-profile racism-based incidents in Kelowna.
The first was just over a week ago when a Halloween display included an effigy of a body hanging from a tree near a Confederate flag.
The second was Saturday when anti-Chinese graffiti was sprayed outside of a Korean restaurant.
And the third was Halloween when a man was caught on camera yelling racist remarks to women who were not speaking English. The latter incident sparked an altercation.
Read more: ‘Disgusting’ Halloween display featuring Confederate flag and noose haunts Kelowna resident
None of these incidents, nor a summertime racist rant against a Palladin security guard, have resulted in criminal charges, though MacIntosh said they have consulted with both the RCMP hate crimes unit in Surrey and Crown counsel.
Get breaking National news
Investigations are ongoing.
With the offensive display, RCMP spoke to the homeowner, who took down the material. The graffiti incident was sparked by a disgruntled customer who was upset about being denied entry when not having a vaccine card and police are still sussing out information about the bus incident.
MacIntosh said all the incidents were unrelated despite the fact they happened in such a short time span and couldn’t offer any insight into whether the fact they were in close succession indicated a larger problem, saying even three events of this kind in three months would be too many.
But, he said, these are “unprecedented times.”
“I would suggest you we have been going through, arguably, in the last 18 months a mental health crisis around the effects of the pandemic,” he said.
“There (are) further restrictions, the mandates, the vaccination requirements that are occurring to travel and so forth, the people trying to work people and unable to work. A combination of all this adds to the stress of individuals. Whether or not that is an actual compounding factor as to why a person chose to make racist remarks, chose to hang an effigy, chose to spray paint racist symbols, I can’t answer.”
MacIntosh said he would like more people to speak out against racism when they see it occur, and said he’d like to speak with people involved in the public transit incident.
Comments
Comments closed.
Due to the sensitive and/or legal subject matter of some of the content on globalnews.ca, we reserve the ability to disable comments from time to time.
Please see our Commenting Policy for more.