Halifax’s Board of Police Commissioners met on Wednesday, and learned that former police chief Dan Kinsella’s sudden retirement is negatively impacting women who have been the victims of violent crimes. That’s because the city, in a proven effort to make the legal system a bit less dismissive of assaulted women, wants to automatically review any case involving violence against women. But the implementation timeline fell apart after Kinsella announced his retirement a month ago.
Police did manage to complete a jurisdictional scan about the case review plan, with every jurisdiction they scanned saying a proactive review process is beneficial, to some degree. At Wednesday’s meeting, the board expected action items for how to begin putting these changes into effect. But the new top cop, Don MacLean, who came on the job Sept 21, said he wasn't up to speed on his underlings’ work so needed more time. A seemingly annoyed commissioner Lindell Smith told the new top cop that the old top cop promised some actions they could do in October, and it's October now.
The new guy apologised, and Smith deferred his motion to advance the case review system until it could come back with action. Even though this work was due in October, city lawyer Marty Ward advised the board not to hold the cops accountable to the timelines they previously said were doable, and not to put a date on when this should come back to the board. So there are no guarantees the board will be able to make life better for women in this budget season.
Other meeting lowlights include the RCMP police chief update including a bunch of anecdotes with no value to the board’s governance, but which did paint a vivid picture of the lawlessness currently gripping the HRM.
This inspired commissioner Gavin Giles to pontificate that cops are brave, because unlike the rest of us, cops are the only ones who can't guarantee they're coming home at the end of a day of work. This is a common line of police propaganda that’s often repeated by screenwriters, but it is fundamentally untrue.
According to the Association of Workers' Compensation Boards of Canada, the industry with the most required time off due workers' comp claims was healthcare, with 30,000 more claims than manufacturing in second place. The most fatal jobs in 2021 were construction workers, which lost 212 people, and manufacturing jobs, which who lost 180. That same year, two police officers died; constables Shelby Patton (RCMP) and Jeffery Northrup (Toronto Police) were both killed by drivers. Also in 2021, Dillon McDonald, age 28; Jared Lowndes, 38; Julian Jones, 28; Martin Gordyn, 27; William Shapiro, 33, and his 18-month-old son Jameson Shapiro, were all killed by police.
While it is true that policing is absolutely brutal work that routinely asks police officers to be in fraught, demanding situations where danger is always a potential, the aggregate evidence says it's safer for cops to respond to those high-intensity situations than it would be for them to build housing.
Also discussed Wednesday was getting police out of fraught, demanding situations when there are potential alternatives to things like mental health calls. The board also briefly debated changing police procedures to see if there was more of a role for civilian interventions, but were told to wait for the public safety department to give their budget presentation on alternatives to things like cops answering mental health calls.
