(Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons)
The founder of Hanes Hummus, Yohannes Petros is speaking out after facing a shocking encounter with a Toronto Police officer while trying to file a report on the racial incident he faced earlier this year.
At the Toronto Home Show in March, the Ontario business owner was allegedly subjected to racist remarks by Toronto mayoral hopeful, Jason Stevens.
Petros told The Brandon Gonez Show back in March, that Stevens approached his booth and was dropping hummus on the floor, which unexpectedly made a turn for the worse.
He explains that when he decided to mention the hummus on the floor, Jason Stevens then made a reference to the 2020 death of George Floyd, when Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck.
Stevens is heard in the viral video saying, “I’ll just put my foot down, like remember what happened to George Floyd?”
Read more:
Hanes Hummus owner calls out Toronto mayoral hopeful over alleged racist remark referencing George Floyd
“It was a moment that was unprovoked, it was unsolicited, it was racist, it was violent,” Yohannes Petros tells The Brandon Gonez Show.
Petros says that he contacted the Toronto Police about this situation on May 25, which he describes the encounter as “appalling”.
He explains that when he contacted the police, they had told him that because he lives in Kitchener, he needed to contact Waterloo Regional Police to file a report which would then be sent to the Toronto Police Service.
Petros was informed that an officer would contact him the next day to visit his home and document the report.
On the morning of May 26, however, the Waterloo Regional Police Service contacted him to explain that they would not be investigating the matter because the incident occurred in Toronto, advising him that he must deal with the Toronto Police directly.
“It didn’t feel right to me, how I was being handled. Those two jurisdictions that gave me conflicting information, and they should have known better,” said Petros.
Petros reached out to the Toronto Police Service’s 14th Division, reported to the officer the details of the encounter that took place with Jason Stevens, and the alleged harassment that followed from Stevens afterwards by email.
But Petros was told that he had to physically come to the 14th Division station to file a report and he did just that on May 30. However, he says that the matter actually got worse from there.
He described the Toronto police officer’s body language as “smug” and after explaining the incident and showing him the video footage from the Toronto Home show, the officer said “What do you want me to do about it?”
Petros says the Toronto Police officer continued to say, “we only investigate serious matters.”
Requesting a police report to be filed multiple times, he says that instead the officer was asking him legal questions that he couldn’t answer, which escalated the situation.
“It became apparent to me that he didn’t care, and I was getting upset, but I never raised my voice. I was calm, and he said to me, ‘I’m going to come back in five minutes and give you a chance to calm down, and then if you answer my questions, I’ll address you. But if you don’t do that, we’re going to ask you to leave the building, and if you don’t leave the building, we are going to arrest you’,” Petros shares.
He then asked to speak with a supervisor but was denied and left waiting for 75 minutes without an update. Then, he made a phone call to the Division from his phone and an officer had told him they were busy and to come back the next day.
After 75 minutes, the officer returned and made him re-explain everything, repeatedly doubting that Petros had called the 14th Division and insisting that they [the officer] “wouldn’t have given those instructions”.
Petros says he was then pressed for irrelevant details like the exact time he called, and even after proving he had phoned that station, the officer told him to contact yet another department, saying, “We don’t do that here.”
Following another series of back and fourth exchanges, Petros eventually obtained the officer’s name and badge identification after requesting them.
“He told me that he wasn’t allowed to write it down, and I didn’t feel like going back to my vehicle and back into the station. So, I said, ‘Please write it down for me’. He scribbled it down, and then he said ‘you’re lucky I’m doing you a favour’. And I left,” Petros tells The Brandon Gonez Show.
Petros shares that he was further traumatized by this experience and that this has left him feeling criminalised.
“I was a Black man inside a police station. I was dismissed, threatened with possible arrest, [and] I was denied a supervisor. I was treated as if I was the source of the problem when I followed the instructions I was given. The racial context did not disappear when I entered the police station,” he said.
He also shares that after this encounter, he had written to Kitchener’s local MPP, the office of the Mayor of Toronto, Chief of Toronto Police, the Superintendent of the 14th Division and filed a complaint to the Law Enforcement Complaints Agency (LECA).
The Brandon Gonez Show reached out to LECA for comment and they replied stating, “LECA staff are subject to strict confidentiality obligations pursuant section 145 of the CSPA. As a result, LECA is unable to comment on whether a particular individual has filed a complaint, confirm the existence of a complaint, or provide any details related to a complaint.”
He says he told the Superintendent, “I want accountability, not a public relations apology. This is what I’m looking for. I want to file this report so that man does not continue terrorising other people, because he’s doing that.”
Petros says he received an apology from Superintendent Domenic Sinopoli, but was told that conflicting directions from officers may stem from differences in “policing experience”.
Petros tells The Brandon Gonez Show that his complaint is not only about whether Jason Stevens’ behaviour meets the legal threshold for charges, but about how he was treated when he tried to report it. He says Toronto police are entitled to assess the evidence, but “not entitled to degrade me while doing it”.
He learned that the interior CCTV footage from the station is no longer available because of a 10-day retention policy, there is also no front desk log and the station phone lines are not recorded. However, exterior footage has been preserved.
The Hanes Hummus owner says people have reached out to him and expressed that they have allegedly encountered issues with this officer in the past.
“Anti-black racism is a real thing. I experienced it both in public and by the Toronto Police Service,” he says.
