Ottawa high school latest target of anti-black graffiti

Administrators with Ottawa's French language school board say they were "shocked" to discover someone had spray-painted racist graffiti atcole secondaire publique Louis-Riel in Blackburn Hamlet on the weekend.

The vandalism occurred sometime over the weekend and appeared in several locations on the high school's property.

"The graffitis are heinous words targeted toward the black community of our school," said the board's superintendent of education responsible for Louis-Riel, Amine Adouni. "We were shocked to discover what was written, and obviously it goes against everything we stand for."

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Aidouni said the board, Conseil des coles publiques de l'Est de l'Ontario(CEPEO), is working with police in theirinvestigation.

"We have made sure to erase the graffiti as soon as we could," Adouni said. "The paint was very fresh, so the graffiti came off thankfully fairly easily."

Adounisaid the board will offer counselling to anyone in the school community who wants to talk about what happened.

School administrators 'shocked' by racist graffiti

5 years ago

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Amine Adouni, a superintendent of education with Ottawa's French language school board, says the incident goes against the school's values of equity and inclusivity.

4th incident

The incident is one of three recent incidents of anti-black graffiti currently under police investigation. Ottawa police have closed their investigation intoa fourth incident in which someone spray-painted the message "N--gers, out!" on ablack family's garage door in the city's east endearlier this month.

It's definitely anti-black hate messaging,obviously it's a hate motivated-crime.- Ottawa police Supt. Chris Renwick

Still under investigation are racist messages including the N-word spray-painted on a path near Blohme Drive in the city's southend, and another case of vandalism to a commercial building near Bank Street and Hunt Club Road.

Police are treating each incident as separate and unrelated for now, though the graffiti has a common message,according to Supt. Chris Renwick.

"It's definitely anti-black hate messaging,obviously it's a hate motivated-crime," Renwick said.

Csar Ndma-Moussa, who heads thethe anti-racism subcommittee of the police service'sCommunity Equity Council,a community-police liaison group, said the incident involving the high school is particularly troubling.

Ndma-Moussasaid anti-hate advocates and police need to address the issue head-on with students at the school.

"These students have a lot of things to say," said Ndma-Moussa, who noted police also have to work at building better relationships with young people.