The Board of Police Commissioners needs to be more pro-police

Wednesday, Jan 15’s Board of Police Commissioners meeting featured strong showings from veteran commissioner Yemi Akindoju and rookie Virginia Hinch. But in spite of a few good arguments against, the board, predictably, rubber-stamped both the Halifax Regional Police and RCMP draft budgets for 2025/26 on to council with very little scrutiny.

The RCMP stand to get 14 new cops for about $2.6 million, which’ll bring their total annual spend to just over $40 million if approved by council later in budget season.

To their credit, the HRP’s $101 million budget seems to be taking to heart Halifax’s efforts at police reform—they are replacing police officers with civilians where appropriate in their organization, which is typically a cost savings. Watching this effort at police reform is kind of like watching a grownup learn to skate. There’s an expectation that they will be good—they’re a grownup, afterall—but as a nation of hockey we forget sometimes that skating is actually pretty hard. The fact that the HRP is budgeting to get bodycams because the RCMP has them could have been a really good opportunity for the board to start the debate about integration of police forces, and consider how HRM can maintain agency and ability to accomplish reforms when the local RCMP’s policy is dictated by the federal force, but the board took a pass.

The board also wrote a memo in support of council adding an armoured personnel carrier for the HRP to the city’s capital budget In his motion calling for this memo and this type of armoured vehicle, commissioner Greg O’Malley writes about the shooting that happened at the Africville reunion: “In the summer of 2024, a mass shooting / rapid deployment event unfolded within city limits which was the first of its kind in the history of Halifax, necessitating the use of an ARV to affect HRP’s public safety response.” In an email exchange between commissioner Tony Mancini and a resident of the HRM, forwarded to The Coast by said resident, Mancini writes: “This past summer a mass shooting / rapid deployment event unfolded within city limits which was the first of its kind in the history of Halifax. The RCMP vehicle was not available and this delayed bringing in paramedics to treat to the victims and remove them from the scene.”

But these accounts, where hindsight so clearly sees the need for an APC, are contradicted by police. In an interview with the CBC last summer, an HRP spokesperson said that both men involved in the shooting had left the area by the time the police arrived. The HRP told The Coast on Jan 9 that “to date, Halifax Regional Police has been fortunate not to be in this situation”—where an APC had to be used. “That said, many of our counterparts in other jurisdictions have.”

So it really feels like this endorsement of an APC maybe should have had a bit more scrutiny. But that would require the board to think critically and do oversight.

The most unpredictable and therefore exciting moments in BOPC meetings are when chair Giles has the floor. Even though at any point he could choose to say nothing, he can rarely resist the temptation to let the record go “uncorrected.” He told the Board that he did like that members of the public in the public participation meeting said that when cops show up to a situation they make it worse and that he didn’t feel like it was correct.

For an expert opinion on what happens when police arrive, let’s turn to William Terrill, a professor of criminology at Arizona State University who has been studying police behaviour and culture for over 20 years. In an interview published by Arizona State University he explains that police are good at de-escalation, but they’re not very good at not-escalating when there’s the “disrespect factor.” He says:

I can call the police officer a “pig” but if I’m putting my hands behind my back because he told me to, I’m compliant but disrespectful.

Turning back to Halifax’s police board chair, to support his beliefs, Giles gave fanciful examples of times when an officer is the first on scene to provide emergency first aid (because EMTs are underfunded) or when a police officer buys a homeless person a bag of groceries. He did not use examples of police doing police work.

Because while Giles provided idyllic examples, it’s worth imagining what the conclusions of the scenes started by Giles might look like in reality. What happens to that officer who shows up first on scene? He’s trying to do first aid, but he doesn’t have bandages and medicine, he has handcuffs and a gun. “How long until the ambulance gets here!?” he screams into his radio, desperately trying to attach a tourniquet to what’s left of this woman’s legs. The rest of her legs are still trapped between the steering wheel and the roof of her car. She lets out a soft gurgle, it catches the officer’s attention so he happens to be looking at her face at the moment her eyes become lifeless. When the firefighters show up he’s throwing up in the ditch.

Or the officer who bought groceries for the unhoused person. Next week she’s pulling extra duty at the Superstore, that man’s been caught stealing groceries. She bought him food last week, she knows he’s hungry, she knows he’s desperate. Last week on the street she could have empathy, today as the officer on duty she cannot. All the way to the station he’s pleading, she’s apologizing. After she drops him off at the station she finds a parking lot and cries for the rest of her shift.

There is a reason that mental health issues and suicides are so prevelant in policing. The job as it currently exists is a mental health meat grinder. Good people who want to serve and protect go in, broken humans come out. In his remarks, Giles mentioned the death of Heidi Stephenson and said that her life was worth protecting. Poor Heidi Stephenson, on one of Nova Scotia’s most horrific days she died in the line of duty, the perfect way for her death to be politicized. By all accounts, she was among the best in the RCMP. It is quite easy to wield her death in an argument as an emotional cudgel. Giles did so effectively, saying that it is “very difficult to hear people marginalize those who by the very dint of their existence put their lives on the line for all of us on a day by day by day.” Even though that’s what the board does with every police budget.

Because it’s easy to say police deserve respect, but Stephenson’s death is not of the variety that could easily be prevented by policy. We can tabletop worst-case scenarios, make some bets and buy some APCs, but it’s a crap shoot. On Nova Scotia’s worst day in recent history, based on the shoot-and-move tactics used by the deranged denturist, it is very unlikely an APC would have saved any lives.

Meanwhile, day by day by day, police officers are traumatized by what is asked of them by their jobs, resulting in moral injuries and suicides. Their lives could be saved by policy, and there are six people in the HRM who are most responsible for shaping policy to save lives. But instead of doing that, the board ordered 14 more units of meat from the RCMP to toss into the grinder.