If the words of Mike Savage, quoting Joe Biden—”Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value”—are true, what does Halifax Regional Council’s approach to police budgeting say? In a year teeming with calls to defund or at least reallocate police money, and in a meeting where those calls were voiced inside council’s virtual chamber, yesterday council voted to pour even more cash into three different police requests.
This week, the budget committee (which is just regional council plus the mayor) neared the end of its months-long budget process by debating all the stuff on the wish list. That is, things various city business units had asked for that were above and beyond their allocated budget.
Because HRM has some extra cash on hand, thanks to increased deed transfer tax revenue from Halifax’s hot-as-hell housing market, there wasn’t as much debate as normal between councillors. But 18 people did show up during the public participation phase to ask council to vote against Halifax Regional Police’s request for an extra $85,000 to hire someone to look into getting body-worn cameras for HRP, as well as to speak out against increasing police funding in general.
“We don’t trust the process of what’s going on in this institution,” Avery Dakin told councillors via Zoom. “I want to at least hopefully have trust in the council to at least listen to what we’re saying and come through on that.”
Residents cited research that’s already available on body-worn cameras: How they can create a false sense of security, that it’s not always clear when the footage will be recorded and who will have access to it, and the high cost of implementing these kinds of projects. Much of this research has been presented to the board of police commissioners.
The $85,000 researcher job is theoretically intended to answer these sorts of concerns. We got here because HRP hastily came to the board of police commissioners with a grand plan for a full rollout of body cameras, to which the board said “more info please”—specifically, as councillor Lisa Blackburn asked for then, clear policies to guide the use of cams.
HRP said it couldn’t find the money for a researcher in its bigger-than-any-other-department’s budget of $88,580,000. Which council already voted to increase this budget season by $2.5 million from the previous year. Nor could it afford $60,000 to pay for the Journey to Change program, which works on anti-Black racism within the police force and came out of the street check report recommendations. And it was also looking for $85,500 to hire another court disposition clerk.
That’s $230,500 worth of wish list that HRP said it can’t afford without extra help from the city. One quarter of one percent of that massive budget of nearly 90 million dollars.
Before the October 2020 election, The Coast asked councillors their thoughts on police and police funding. Councillors Cathy Deagle-Gammon, Sam Austin and Lindell Smith all said they think HRM should defund the police. Sam Austin, Waye Mason, Shawn Cleary, Lindell Smith and Tim Outhit all said they think HRM spends too much on police services.
At Thursday’s meeting, when it came to deciding on paying for the body-worn cameras researcher, only councillors Waye Mason, Iona Stoddard and Patty Cuttell voted against. On the court disposition clerk, councillors Trish Purdy, Patty Cuttell, Pam Lovelace, Paul Russell, Tim Outhit and Cathy Deagle-Gammon voted against. And every councillor and mayor savage voted in favour of the extra $60,000 for Journey to Change.
Councillor Shawn Cleary said he was OK spending the $85,000 extra on looking at body-worn cameras so Halifax could have its own research on whether or not they’d work for the needs of the community here. When HRP first presented the “over” items to council, HRP chief Dan Kinsella alluded to this position including community consultation, saying: “Every community is different. Every community has different needs and we want to make sure that if we are going to be bringing this forward, that we get the right dialogue with the community.”
But CAO Jacques Dube said at Thursday’s meeting this week that this position would not engage in a public consultation portion, just look at research available.
Council will meet once more to talk about the finalized budget and any implications on the tax rate on May 4.
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This article appears in Apr 1-30, 2021.
The Police need SUPPORT….and respect. They suit up and risk their lives on their work day….would you like to take their place….with no support, respect, shift work, criminals resisting arrest and somehow the narrative is always they are in the wrong. So much anxiety …it seems to me this is a time and society of finger pointing…who can ai BLAME for …fill in the blank !
Not good enough…with out a fully supported, trained and respected profession…who in the right mind would want the job ???? Then what….who do you call to protect you and risk their lives….This is all backwards and has to STOP….common sense please
https://media3.giphy.com/media/U67CajqFIji…
Unfortunately they don’t keep everyone safe. For a lot of people calling the police comes with a risk that they will be put in danger of dying or other kinds of harm instead of safety. It is really too bad that serve and protect does not apply equally to all citizens.
If the police were trusted by the whole community, and served the whole community, and didn’t have proven racial and other biases, then there wouldn’t be as many questions about investing in the service. For the only profession in civil society that is legally allowed to shoot someone to have such deep problems with racism and misogyny is not OK, regardless if they are heroes a bunch of the time for other people.
A very obvious strategy that could help change the corrupted culture of police, and could increase safety and protection of the service for BIPOC folks and other police-endangered groups like women, would be to increase training requirements for all police. In many countries police must train and study for 3 years before they are armed and permitted to use deadly force. In Halifax it is only 38 weeks.
Imagine the kind of learning and development police would have if they spent another 2 years studying criminology, sociology, gender studies and other courses that grounded them in an understanding of culture, gender, social groups and how power can be used appropriately and what it looks like when it is abused, or filtered through unconscious biased lenses etc.
Not sure how we can demand high levels of training and education for many professions but have a low standard in this regard for the citizens we give guns to in our communities. It’s not the only solution, but extensive training in areas that are likely to reduce police homicides and racist practices like carding, and make it a safer profession for more groups seems like an extremely obvious and fairly easy way to begin making a change.