Community leaders sound the alarm about missing Black boys in the GTA

By Devon Banfield, Now

Last week, the Brampton Black Empowerment Unit hosted a town hall calling for action to address the issue after multiple posts about the missing youth have been going viral on social media.

Andre Fullerton, an advisor with the Black Empowerment Unit, says that the issue is a growing concern.

“We weren’t sure why they were missing… there was very little reporting going on, so I was definitely very nervous,” he explained. 

“But since the town hall and David Mitchell and the other police services from around the GTA provided some real insight and data that supports the fact that, you know, [youth] weren’t being taken out of their homes,” Fullerton told Now Toronto. 

“I think that was something that at least alleviated some of the stress, certainly it brings about some other concerns, but again, at least I felt better knowing that they weren’t taken, kidnapped or abducted.”

Fullerton is calling for answers as to where these missing youth are going. 

“While they answered questions in terms of…young people not being abducted. They didn’t answer questions in terms of why young people are leaving their homes,” Fullerton explained. “Research needs to be done to understand why young people are leaving [their] homes.” 

Back in December, Toronto-based multimedia producer Shana McCalla started a petition calling for the issue of missing Black boys to get more attention from the public, police, and media. 

“If we do nothing, we risk losing these boys forever. We risk losing more of our youth—forgotten, unheard, unseen,” the petition reads. “The silence surrounding their cases—the lack of media coverage, public alerts, and visible police urgency—is unacceptable.”

Read more about the petition’s requests and this case.

Missing Black people often fail to make the news, but we cover similar cases in our breaking news.