Police look to build trust with minority communities
Force considers resurrecting advisory panel
Waterloo Regional Police toured the community two years ago to explain how the service is tracking and responding to racism in policing.
Through this outreach, police hoped to recruit a community advisory panel to provide input and build trust with minority communities.
The panel proposal was put on hold after presentations on police racism drew few people.
“I call it kind of like an apathy toward race and identitybased data,” said Geraldine Stafford, a Black civilian who manages the service's equity, diversity and inclusion unit.
Data shows that Black individuals are consistently overrepresented when police use force, and when police document people in the street while gathering intelligence with the goal of fighting crime.
Data points to other racial disparities. In 2025, Black individuals and people perceived as Middle Eastern or East/Southeast Asian were overrepresented when police used force in executing a warrant.
Data further shows that Black and East/Southeast Asian individuals were overrepresented when an officer, perceiving the presence of a firearm, chose to use force.
A police report states: “Patterns of overrepresentation serve as flags for guiding more indepth evaluation and review for the purpose of reducing systemic racism, where possible.”
Complexity in racebased data likely dampened public interest in outreach in 2024, Stafford figures.
“I wouldn't say any of the apathy is apprehension to work with police,” she said.
Today, police are engaged in a different kind of public outreach that's drawing more interest, Stafford said. Its success has the service thinking about resurrecting the plan to recruit a community advisory panel.
On certain Fridays, the service hosts online meetings for residents and community leaders to question officers. Stafford calls them coffee chats.
“It's the will of the community and what they want to talk about,” she said. “Hate crime has dominated the conversation.”
Hate crimes reported to Waterloo Regional Police have doubled since 2021. Last year there were 224 hatemotivated crimes reported to police, about half nonviolent and the other half consisting of threats, assaults and other violence.
Motivations last year were most frequently race, followed by religion and then more distantly by immigrants/newcomers to Canada.
Nabeel Rana has participated in online coffee chats.
He finds his Muslim community is better prepared for what might come its way when police provide new data on hate crimes, explain recent incidents, and identify who has been targeted.
“It just gives us a little bit of a heads up, and a little bit of perspective on which way things are going,” said Rana, who has attended on behalf of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community.
He recalls how a Cambridge mosque was vandalized a few years ago. “Muslims are one of the targeted groups for hate crime,” Rana said.
The police service “has been doing an outstanding job in terms of helping whenever we need it,” he said.
Online coffee chats are “totally useful,” said Mercy Osayi, a Black woman who has participated on behalf of Women of Dignity International, a social support organization.
After participating, Osayi was able to put a female immigrant from Africa in touch with police after the woman complained about mistreatment by her controlling husband.
“In our community, they are totally afraid to call the police,” Osayi said.
The woman was persuaded to call police. She waited until her husband left their home after he barred her from using a telephone while he was at home.
Police responded, stepped in, and it helped. The woman is happier with her life after she exercised her rights, and she is pursuing new freedoms she has in Canada, Osayi said.
Seeing how coffee chats are resonating, Stafford is pondering a shortlist of candidates for a community advisory panel that could be set up later this year. She could not present a firmer timeline.
“We want to do this right rather than fast,” she said. There's a learning curve and “you can't just throw people into this work.”
“It does absolutely make sense because it will be diverse,” Rana said. An advisory panel could help educate the public, and in turn help community leaders contain impulses behind hate crimes.
Osayi agrees an advisory panel could be helpful. She has advice on how police should proceed.
“I suggest a situation whereby they reach out to grassroots organizations, do a formal training on what they want to disseminate, and watch how these people go back,” she said.
“Go to the grassroots organizations, because they get in touch with most of the people in the community.”
Police have described multiple goals for an advisory panel.
It would enhance communication, solicit input, promote police transparency and accountability, build trust, educate police on the dynamics of certain communities, and help solve problems in ways that are “more effective and culturally sensitive,” an online description says.