Man with history of racial animus charged with hate crimes for signs in window

A Winnipeg man with a history of uttering racial slurs while getting into unprovoked altercations has been charged for several offensive signs placed on the window of his Minto-area home.

Michael Ryan Wallbank, 42, was charged Friday, accused of wilful promotion of hatred displaying hate symbols, after Winnipeg Police Service major crimes investigators executed a warrant at his Ashburn Street home.

Police began investigating potential hate crimes after several area residents complained in early September about the signs posted in the window of the home where Wallbank lives.

After consulting with prosecutors, investigators charged him with the hate offences, police said Sunday. He’s been held in custody.

The five signs, in a front window of a house on the 700 block of Ashburn, contained a slur, referred to Nazis as “heroes” and called Muslims, Christians and other groups “evil.”

Wallbank has a history of uttering threats and committing assaults, court records show.

His record began at age 30 and includes seven assault convictions, including one on a police officer, and five for uttering threats.

In 2017, while staying at a rooming house, he grew erratic, aggressive and angry, threatening to kill two roommates and send them “back to Africa,” court heard.

Most recently, in February 2023, he was handed a suspended sentence and three years of supervised probation after he was found guilty of assault and uttering threats in the park outside the Millennium Library in April 2021.

At the 2023 sentencing, provincial court Judge Lee Ann Martin said the assaults and uttering threats convictions were all “very similar,” with Wallbank becoming angry and threatening, then uttering racial slurs.

“There’s that underlying thread, as well, of what we, as a society, would call racial slurs, which, I’m going to say as a society, we find abhorrent… we don’t talk to people that way in our society, we just don’t,” Martin said.

In the 2021 incident near the library and police headquarters, Wallbank got into an altercation with a woman — who he later claimed in court had called him “gay” — which caught the attention of an off-duty police officer who was not in uniform.

Wallbank asked the officer what he was looking at and called him racial slurs, including at one point using the phrase “dirty N-word,” court heard.

The officer, upset with the slur, confronted Wallbank, who punched him, starting a fight. Other officers arrested Wallbank who, while in custody in the back of a police cruiser, threatened to kill a supervising officer.

Crown prosecutor Brendan Roziere had sought a year of jail time for Wallbank, noting the apparent racial animus involved in the crime.

Defence lawyer Caleigh Glawson asked for a six-month conditional sentence order, or house arrest, plus probation.

Glawson said Wallbank, as an adult, enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces and that experience changed him, according to his family.

The lawyer said Wallbank has difficulty socializing with people and tries to keep to himself. After getting a criminal record, he went on social assistance and had been living in shabby rooming houses, but at the time of his 2023 sentencing, had found an apartment.

Glawson argued he required counselling and anger management.

Martin, after speaking with Wallbank in court, said people with his record would typically get jail time for incidents such as the attack outside the library. She said something — though it’s unclear what — appears to have gone wrong in his adult life, leading to his struggles.

Martin instead opted for a suspended sentence and probation order, including a mental-health assessment, counselling and anger-management programming.

erik.pindera@winnipegfreepress.com