Edmonton police say racial slur hurled at cyclist not a hate crime

Edmonton police say a driver who called a cyclist a racial slur will not be charged with a hate crime.

Bashir Mohamed says he was cycling up to an intersection past the construction site for the city’s new arena on Friday evening when a horn honked from the truck behind him.

The light turned red and Mohamed says he stopped, and that’s when he says a woman in the vehicle rolled down her window, swore at him and told him to get off the road.

Mohamed, who is black, says a man in the truck then got out and used a racial slur.

Insp. Dan Jones says a hate crime or hate speech involves violence or inciting violence.

Mohamed says he’s accepted a written apology from the driver, and adds police need to do more to protect cyclists.

“This is frustrating and demonstrates the lack of protection and even recourse afforded to people of colour when called racial slurs, and for cyclists who are unable to trust police to investigate dangerously aggressive drivers,” said a post on Mohamed’s Facebook page.

“Despite this, the man in the SUV reached out to me in order to give an apology. In the apology, he directly admits to using the hateful racial slur. I believe the apology is sincere and I have chosen to accept it.”

Jones says he understands Mohamed’s feeling of frustration.

“Often time when you talk about language, there’s not real remedy in the Criminal Code for these types of things, so they become challenging investigations to make people satisfied with what happened.

“When it becomes something like this — anger, name calling — even the word itself isn’t necessarily hate speech or hate crime.”

Mohamed admits he was using a controversial practice among cyclists called “take the lane” where a rider uses the middle of a lane instead of riding closer to the curb.

He said he did it because he was riding through a construction zone. When he got to the red light, he said he shifted his bike to the left of the lane, something he said he does as a courtesy to drivers behind him who may want to turn right.

(CHED, The Canadian Press)