Community leaders and local advocates gathered at a town hall at Brampton City Hall to address the concerning number of missing Black youths in GTA.
The Black Empowerment unit, community members, and local advocates organized the event, which included the Peel Region Police. The police discussed a range of issues, such as how to better educate the public on reporting missing persons and how police conduct investigations. They also reviewed the status of missing Black men and boys in the Peel Region.
Peel Regional Police Staff Superintendent Hubert Hiltz says the service intends to investigate, locate, and return all missing children home.
Hiltz said it's also important to address the underlying issues that may have caused them to disappear.
“Our statistics do not show a trend of concern when it relates to missing youth and foul play,” he said. “Our concern is yes, they are young male Blacks that are missing, leaving their homes for reasons we don’t know.
“It could be they don’t want to be found or there could be underlying issues,” Hiltz said.
A resident questioned why police take so long to react to young teens missing, Hiltz said it takes two to tango.
“Sometimes when we are initiating that missing person's investigation, the person reporting it is sometimes not as forthcoming with information, which will allow us to have the full entire picture of what’s happening," he said.
“They're just saying I don’t know what happened, they are missing. So, it makes our investigation challenging,” he said.
Hiltz said they face the same issues when they locate a missing person. Most of the time they stay silent.
“One of the challenges we face is when we do locate somebody, they are necessarily not open or forthcoming with that information as to what the reason was as to why they went missing,” he said.
Peel Regional Police say their data, revealed at the town hall meeting, show that from August 2024 to December 2024, of the 125 missing persons reported in the region, 36 were Black while another 36 were South Asian.
Dave Mitchell, senior operations director at the Youth Association for Academics, Athletics and Character Education (YAAACE) of North York, said the meeting focused on moving forward and ensuring the community is engaged and understands what is occurring.
“Really, (we're) looking at the role of research in terms of trying to get at the centre of some of the issues that are motivating young people to be missing and the type of support that parents may require," he said.
YAAACE was formed in 2007 to create access to opportunities that would meet the community's needs and mitigate systemic inequities.
Aretha McCarthy, who is a Violence Prevention Export, and Mental health specialist says community members need to be more vocal.
"A lot of times we don't want to speak up about things because of fear. We fear law enforcement, they are there to help us," McCarthy said.
"We fear the cultural aspect of what our family, friends, and neighbourhoods are going to say. Stop being in fear. Fear no one and speak up." she said
Gwenneth Chapman, the senior advisor to Brampton's Black African and Caribbean Social, Cultural and Economic Empowerment and Anti-Black Racism Unit, said the town hall is about working together to better serve youth.
“Our young people, that’s our number 1 priority, so we are going to do whatever we can to make sure that our young people feel the support and they get the support that’s needed in order for them to be successful and live out their god giving purpose,” she said.
Two other town halls are being held, one on Jan. 31 in Pickering at the Revival Time Tabernacle Church and one on Feb. 1 at the Malton Youth Club in Mississauga.
