Police resource officers returning to Hamilton public schools after their removal in 2020

Police officers will be back in all Hamilton’s public schools in September 2027, seven years after the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) ended its police liaison program following an activist campaign in 2020.

HWDSB chief executive officer Sheryl Robinson Petrazzini told families in a letter Tuesday that Hamilton Police Service and the city’s four publicly funded school boards will be signing a memorandum of understanding. The agreement covers the provincially mandated School Resource Officer (SRO) program. The four boards are the HWDSB, the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board, Conseil scolaire Viamonde and Conseil scolaire catholique MonAvenir.

The program is expected to start with four officers serving schools across all four boards. The boards and police will begin a community engagement process in December. The return follows a push by Premier Doug Ford’s government to bring officers back into classrooms across Ontario. In November 2025, the province passed Bill 33, which amended the Education Act to require school boards to run SRO programs wherever local police services offer them.

The program’s return comes as youth crime in Hamilton has climbed. According to a Hamilton Police Service report, 1,147 young people aged 12 to 17 were involved in crime in 2025. That was the highest total in five years and a jump of nearly 20 per cent from 959 in 2024. Several high-profile incidents involving Hamilton youths have made headlines in recent years.

Those include a 15-year-old boy firing shots inside Lime Ridge Mall in September 2024, an innocent bystander shot and killed outside Jackson Square by a 17-year-old boy in July 2025, and a 16-year-old shot and killed in Jackson Square in April. A 14-year-old boy has been charged in that incident. Earlier this month, Capt. Kenneth Kunkel, 59, an air cadet squadron commander, was seriously injured at The Centre on Barton in an incident that involved an 11-year-old boy, a 12-year-old boy and a 48-year-old woman.

The HWDSB trustees voted to end the board’s police liaison program on June 22, 2020. The vote came weeks after Black Lives Matter protests across North America. At the time, Hamilton Police had 11 officers assigned to the HWDSB. A 2019 report said officers made 2,496 school visits that year and conducted 838 investigations.

Board chair Alex Johnstone said in a 2020 press release, “While the Board heard positive examples of the police liaison program, ultimately, we believe this decision will benefit all students, and especially students from Black, Indigenous and racialized communities.”

Then-trustee Cam Galindo joined the protesters and voted in favour of ending the program. The campaign was led by a group called HWDSB Kids Need Help. The group claimed that “police officers in schools intimidate and harass Black, racialized, poor, immigrant, queer, trans, disabled” students.

During the vote, members blocked Main Street outside Hamilton City Hall for seven hours.

One of the group’s organizers, identified only as “Layla,” told the socialist publication Spring Magazine at the time that the “ultimate goal” of their work is “abolition.”

“It is a world without prisons, which serve to separate people from their communities and create generational trauma. It is a world without policing, which acts as a tool of the state to surveil and criminalize Black and Indigenous peoples. It is a world without capitalism: a system that pits us against one another, and forces us to leave one another behind,” she continued.

Former city council candidate Kojo Damptey and former Hamilton Centre MPP Sarah Jama were among those involved with the group and visible at protests.

The group later focused their efforts on a campaign called “Defund HPS.” In July 2020, the group painted “Defund the Police” on the street in front of City Hall and later held a two-week sit-in. On Nov. 30, 2020, Defund HPS protesters went to then-mayor Fred Eisenberger’s home after dark and left a coffin outside. The group said he had “blood on his hands” for funding police instead of “free housing.”

The Catholic board kept its relationship with police after the HWDSB program ended.

Opposition to the program’s return began building before this week’s announcement. In October 2025, after one of the province’s announcements, an event was held at City Hall opposing the return of officers to Hamilton’s public schools. Speakers included former student trustee Ahona Mehdi, Ward 2 trustee Sabreina Dahab, and Ward 4 trustee Abby Zaitley.

Robinson Petrazzini said details on how students, families and community members can take part in the engagement process will be shared “in the coming weeks.”