Indigenous Liaison Officer, Hamilton Police Services

Stacey Hill is the first Indigenous liaison officer for Hamilton Police Services and a long-time advocate for and within her Indigenous community.

Her liaison role, which she assumed in late 2022, is meant to build stronger relationships between police and Indigenous communities, which have often been strained and fraught with distrust.

Members of Hamilton’s Indigenous community held a traditional welcoming ceremony for Stacey in April 2023. At the ceremony, she was presented with an eagle feather, a high honour in the Indigenous community meant to represent the good work she has done and will do moving forward.

She has worked for HPS for more than 25 years serving as a patrol officer in the east end, along with stints in traffic, fraud, recruiting, and crime prevention, among many other postings.

Stacey is an Indigenous awareness trainer/presenter, has Level 3 training in crime prevention through environmental design, is a scene of crime officer, a crisis intervention team officer, a domestic violence officer and has training in behavioural interviewing and background investigations.

She works closely with Hamilton’s newly formed Indigenous Consultation Circle to assist Indigenous people navigate contacts with police.

She said her approach to policing has always been based on the Seven Grandfather Teachings and trying to help people rather than just simply always arresting them. Everyone has a story and talking to people to learn how they got to where they are can lead to solutions that makes things better rather than worse, she said.

About 12 years ago, Stacey led training at HPS for all officers and civilians to teach them about Indigenous people and their histories, including colonization, systemic racism, the Sixties Scoop and residential schools.

Though the new liaison role has been 20 years or more in the making, it took on great urgency after the violent arrest and stomping of an Indigenous man at a Hamilton gas station in 2022. An HPS officer was charged with assault and pleaded guilty.

Following the assault, the Hamilton Regional Indian Centre (HRIC) made several recommendations to improve relations between police and the Indigenous community, including the use of mandatory body cameras, the creation of a committee that would implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action and the liaison position that Stacey now occupies.

Stacey has a long history of volunteering and community advocacy. Along with OPP officer Monty Kohoko, Stacey formed the original Hamilton Aboriginal Advisory Board that served the city for more than 10 years. She served as a liaison between HPS and First Nations members during the dispute over the construction of the Red Hill Valley Parkway, served on a committee dedicated to race relations and missing Aboriginal women with the HPS and was a mentor on behalf of the HPS at the Niwasa Head Start Daycare.

She has served with the Hamilton Urban Indigenous Leadership consultation circle called Circle of Beads.

As a teen, she was Miss New Credit, an ambassador role for Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and she conducted tours of the Mush Hole, the notorious former Mohawk residential school that is now the Woodland Cultural Centre.