The Board of Police Commissioners approved Halifax Regional Police’s request for more cops for its 2024-2025 budget, but with some changes.
Those changes don’t mean fewer officers, though, but rather puts them into community roles instead of regular patrol.
As for the Halifax Regional Police request, Chief Don MacLean gave a presentation in October requesting 12 officers for patrol, six officers for community response, one constable for a hate crime unit, one sergeant and one constable for the police science program, and two civilian investigators for the background and security clearance unit. Some of those patrol officers would be trained to go to hospitals on mental health calls.
The department also wanted one coordinator for its employee and family assistance program and body-worn cameras for its officers.
The total cost of the request is $4 million.
About 40 people spoke at last week’s police board meeting. Most of those speakers were against the police budget increase, although a couple of volunteers from Alderney Landing in downtown Dartmouth wanted more community police in the area.
During a virtual meeting in October, about a dozen people spoke about the police’s request, with about half of the speakers against the budget increase. The other half spoke in support of the budget increase. Most of those speakers wanted to see more community police in downtown Dartmouth.
Amendment for two more community officers
During the board’s meeting on Wednesday, board chair Becky Kent moved an amendment to the department’s request, suggesting taking two of the patrol officers from the 12 the department requested to work instead on community safety for a minimum of three years. So, 10 officers would work on patrol with two working on community safety.
Kent said her amendment would recognize that many reports, including those from the Mass Casualty Commission, the defund the police report, the Policing Transformation Study Recommendation report, and the Wortley report, all called for changes in policing.
“We have so many things at play that are suggesting that changes are upon us,” Kent said. “Changes require good models, different models… this is what this is intended to get us to. I think this would be welcome to the public certainly, and council consideration.”
“I believe in supporting and funding our policing in the way they need to be, but I also believe in changing some of the models.”
‘Out of the mental health business, 100%’
Commissioner Lindell Smith still had concerns about officers working on mental health calls.
“I am just not comfortable with adding more police doing that role, but understanding, we had this conversation before, on the flipside, it was shared with us that 706 hours were spent by RCMP members at the hospital and with HRP 4,653 hours,” Smith said.
“So, I do know there is a significant amount of time is spent at hospitals for police, and this would help that. But I do still get concerned with the fact that we’d have police in hospitals spending so much time when they could be out in our communities.”
In response to Smith’s concerns, MacLean said he would “love to be out of the mental health business, 100%.” He continued:
Even with the creation of community safety, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to be out of that, just because of certain issues. But, to be clear, if this board could collectively wave a magic wand right now and I was out of the the mental health business tomorrow morning, my ask isn’t going to change.
Those officers are not about responding to mental health calls. That’s one piece of it. It was meant to highlight, as part of the data and the justifications and rationale articulated in terms of trying to mitigate against some of the issues we have. Really, it’s not about going to mental health calls. What it was about was having a pilot with the hospital where we could have less officers in that space covering more at one particular time. So, that would free up the frontline response, which has been my priority from the start.
The amendment didn’t reduce the number of new officers, but rather just moved their roles around. During further debate, the amendment was again changed to reduce the ask for six community response officers to four since now two of the original patrol cops would be moved to community policing.
The vote on the amended proposed was tied, with Kent breaking that tie and voting in favour of the amended proposal.
“I still believe there is a need for our police forces to be supported and healthy and have the tools and resources to do what they have to go,” Kent said.
That budget request will now go to Halifax regional council as it continues its budget process over the next few months.
What a joke
The acting police chief offered this tortured response to the concern expressed by the Police Board regarding the amount of time being spent by HRM police waiting in hospitals and his request for additional resources for :community safety
“Those officers are not about responding to mental health calls. That’s one piece of it… Really, it’s not about going to mental health calls. What it was about was having a pilot with the hospital where we could have less officers in that space covering more at one particular time. So, that would free up the frontline response, which has been my priority from the start”
So more police officers are being requested so that less resources are being wasted having officers sitting around in the hospital? Couldn’t this have been done with existing resources?
At the last public meeting hosted by the Board, both health care workers and those that had experienced a health crisis strongly expressed their opinion that a police presence was not constructive..And HRM has formed this new Community Safety Dept. with a mandate that included better serving the needs of people experiencing a health crisis.
This looks to me like the police are merely justifying an expansion to their empire. The Board motion to reallocate how the new police are used doesn’t even seem relevant. The acting police chief will deploy his force as he sees fit. I suspect that the Board Chair and the HRM lawyer that advised her before the meeting know this.
Despite a looming budget crisis, my guess is that Regional Council will approve the police budget requested. This would have less to do with concern for the homeless and people experiencing a health crisis and more to do with maintaining law and order as our living conditions continue to deteriorate.
The Chiefs initial demand, which came with no paperwork, no written justification, no numbers whatsoever was crystal clear:
New officers, specially trained in mental health, to go on mental health calls and then sit around the hospital. He made a point of describing the Mental Health Mobile Crisis Team as useless.
His initial demand made no reference to public safety, no mention of criminality. It was a clear and unambiguous demand for armed response to the mental health crisis.
It would be trivial for the HRP to be “out of the mental health business, 100%.”; the chief could issue an order *today* to not respond to mental health calls.
The Chiefs actions do not correspond to his words. Repeating myself, he made a point of calling out the Mobile Crisis Team as useless, and demanded 12 new officers specifically to respond to mental health cases.
I truly cannot understand why we are still increasing the police budget. Funding in the billions (I realuze the local police budget is only in the milions) is needed for housing and other social services and would do so much more… I think the population was pretty clear, and I thought Commissioners and Councillors were on board… but, when it comes right down to it – everyone blinks, and gives the police more and more… They do NOT provide community safety – always arriving after the safety has been violated… and more people fear them, than feel supported by them. Not just mental health calls – investigations like missing persons and more, do not need to be armed, or done by police; traffic control? And of course the ever inappropriate mental health checks (with inappropiate arrests and deaths) and the lack of collection of evidence/rape kits/prosecution of sexual assault. (Maybe some spillover there to the Crown) Just… annoyed… Some things are “complicated” —
this does not appear to be – just no political will. Just like poverty is a political choice – so is using police and threats of punishment to try and control a mostly docile and cooperative population. I always used to say that we need them in case of armed “bad guys” but, of course, we had a murderous rampage, and saw how effective they were even in that case – the very place I thought they would be needed/effective… they failed pretty badly.