Perth OPP and Avon Maitland District School board teamed up to educate the community about hate and bias-related incidents and their impact on the community.
Featured guests at the free event Thursday night at Listowel District Secondary School included the board’s human rights and equity lead, known as Mr. Burt, and OPP Det. Sgt. Tara Bolstad.
My Stratford Now spoke with Mr. Burt who said the AMDSB goal is to educate students and the community.
“As a school system, we have specific procedures that we go through as far as first investigating, and then from there you have those who are impacted, that we have to support, we have students that are involved that we have to support, and then you have the student that was the aggressor that we have to support,” Burt said.
My Stratford Now also spoke with Const. Jill Johnson with Perth County OPP, serving as the community mobilization and mental health liaison.
She said that if people want to report, they should go to one of the three detachments in Perth County: Listowel, Mitchell, or Sebringville.
“For people who maybe aren’t comfortable reporting to the police but they want it documented so that we know what’s happening in the community, Victim Services has a tool that you can actually input the information of what’s happened and then you can request follow-up or not and it’s just a way for us to get a better picture of what’s happening in the community,” said Johnson.
Both Burt and Const. Johnson advise people to speak up and report if they witness any hate and or bias-related incidents in the community.
