In the mid-1990s, the Toronto Police Service developed procedures to respond to hate crimes. In the years since, these practices have focused not only on traditional policing concerns around officer roles and responsibilities, evidence collection, and documentation, but also on emerging priorities related to victim care, community consultation, and respect for racial and cultural diversity. Policing and the Politics of Hate Crime Response draws on first-hand accounts of front-line officers, hate crime investigators, diversity officers, police trainers, and senoir police personnel in Toronto, as well as on an analysis of official police policy, occurrence reports, training materials, and government documents. Through these, Timothy Bryan explores what police do, how they do it, and whether their responses transform conditions for hate-crime victims and targeted communities. Bryan demonstrates how anxieties around bad press and public criticism, concerns about the integrity of the investigative process, and potential accusations of institutional racism shape the way law enforcement organizations and the officers that work in them respond to suspected hate crimes. While hate crime has received greater attention from police services in Canada in recent decades, this groundbreaking study reveals how institutional priorities and the very parameters that define policing prevent hate crime response from being truly transformational for victims and vulnerable communities.