Nearly 60% of the class of 85 new Toronto police constables that graduated on Monday, the year’s first graduating recruitment class, speak a language other than English, according to the Toronto Police Service.
The languages spoken by the Toronto Police College class, which ranges in age from 20 to 44, include French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Gujrati, Tamil, Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, Cantonese, Korean, Mandarin, German, Polish, Croatian, Ukrainian, Russian and Somali, the department stated.
“I don’t see Hebrew or Yiddish listed on the list of languages for this recruit class,” Viktor Sarudi, a media relations officer for the Toronto Police Service, told JNS.
Mike Fegelman, executive director of HonestReporting Canada, told JNS that “as has been widely reported in the news, Jews in Toronto continue to be the leading target of religiously-motivated hate crimes.”
“Given the criticism that Toronto police have received for their permissive white-glove treatment of hate rallies for almost three years, it would be incumbent on them to actively seek representation from the Jewish community in their rank and file as a means of remedy,” Fegelman told JNS.
The Toronto Police Service said earlier in the month that Jews were the targets of 82% of religion-based hate crimes in Toronto in 2025, when Muslims were targets 14% of the time. The department also said that hate crimes were up 40% in 2026.
