Halifax Regional Police’s acting chief Don MacLean has a scheduling problem. It’s a big scheduling problem. A $1.4 million scheduling problem. But it can’t be fixed by the $1.4 million Halifax’s Board of Police Commissioners is recommending council give him, a decision the board made at its Nov. 29 meeting, the culmination of a series of frustrating BOPC budget meetings.
MacLean told the board that he needed more officers because a lot of officers are retiring; over a hundred are eligible in the next few years. Cops are having trouble recruiting new officers. Likely because most people wouldn’t feel morally okay with protecting Galen Weston’s food while food bank use spiked. Even though they’re super common, collisions between heavy machines are gresome, violent affairs. We’ve had more of those pleasantly titled “non-fatal injuries,” in the HRM this year than we have police officers. But a human body can be broken in devastating non-fatal ways. Or in other words, cops are getting mental injuries and taking time off work to heal. This is on top of all the other normal workplace stuff, like maternity leaves. So, MacLean needs more cops.
But those cops won’t fix his scheduling problem. Because his officers don’t really have a well-defined job, and they have a phone number we all know. It’s a phone number we all call whenever anything goes wrong. Paramedics, they fix you when you’re hurt. Firefighters, they put out fires. And cops? Well, they do everything else. And as long as that’s true, Don MacLean will always need more cops.
This is why every year he, or the person in that chair, will always tell the board they need more cops.
But they don’t need more cops. Or rather they might need more cops, and they might not—it depends what we want them to do. Right now MacLean needs more cops, because a lot of cops are spending a lot of time waiting in hospitals. And that’s objectively not the best use of a department most heavily represented in Halifax’s sunshine list of highest-paid city employees. That is your tax dollars, sitting in a hospital with someone who also probably doesn’t want to be sitting in a hospital with a cop. This requirement for cops to stick around when they bring someone to a hospital is something that can be changed with provincial legislation.
But it’s also something that can be prevented. The city is standing up a new department, the department of public safety, this budget year. Halifax is planning on making some really big moves on a civilian-led mental health crisis response in HRM. And if the city is successful in its plans, then it may prevent the need for a lot of hospital-waiting tax-burning cop hours. And that would go a long way to alleviating a/chief MacLean’s scheduling problem. But in order for the city to do that, it’ll need money.
Money the Board of Police Commissioners is recommending MacLean gets instead. Money MacLean will always request, until the board better defines his job. Three massive reports and many promises later, this is something the board has yet to do. Happy every year to defer to the chief’s professional opinion that the police department needs more cops.
Ah well, maybe after the election next year we’ll get a police board that understands its job, so it can help MacLean do his.
This is, of course, unless council sends this BOPC budget proposal right back to the board to reconsider. Your councillor might vote to do just that if you send them an email.
This article appears in Dec 4-31, 2023.
