After the annual elections of the chair and vice-chair, Halifax’s Board of Police Commissioners used its Monday, Jan. 8 meeting to vote to recommend council approve an additional six RCMP officers in the 2024/25 budget: two for domestic violence, four for general duty. After commissioner Becky Kent kept her seat as chair and vice chair […]
Board of Police Commissioners
Posted inNews + Opinion
Will $1.4 million fix the police scheduling problem?
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 […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Police budget discussions finally get started for real
The Board of Police Commissioners met on Wednesday and finally had their initial strategic budget meeting at the third time of asking. That is, three meetings into the police budget deliberation process and the Nov. 15 meeting was the first time the board got to actually see the Halifax Regional Police’s proposed 2024/25 budget rather […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Police take request for 24 new hires to the public
The Board of Police Commissioners met virtually on Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 25, to get public feedback on the police budget priorities. Halifax Regional Police made the same budget asks at this meeting as they did at last Wednesday’s BOPC meet—which keen readers may remember we described with the headline ”Talk of hiring 24 new cops […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Talk of hiring 24 new cops is a waste of time
On Wednesday Oct. 18, Halifax’s Board of Police Commissioners had the first meeting in their budget pre-season. It’s largely unclear what the point of this meeting was, but we’ll get to that later. The meeting started with Halifax Regional Police giving their first budget presentation of the 2024 budget season, asking for a grand total […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Board of Police Commissioners has no control over moonlighting cops
Halifax Regional Police does, in fact, have a policy governing police moonlighting in grocery stores, but no one is allowed to see it—yet. It was brought up at this week’s Board of Police Commissioners meeting by city councillor/board chair Lindell Smith because of recent media attention. The only available public policy on cops using taxpayer-funded […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Police board tries to get ready for next week’s evictions from People’s Park
The Board of Police Commissioners met on Wednesday, July 6, in person at City Hall for the first time in a long time. Commissioner Yemi Akindoju brought muffins for everyone. It was a nice gesture for a meeting dominated by gun violence and a prolonged discussion about what to do about our unhoused neighbours. The […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Breaking down the dismal statistics on sexual assault
The Coast recently reported on a presentation that Sunny Marriner gave to Halifax’s Board of Police Commissioners. Marriner is an expert on sexual violence and the justice system, and has become an advocate for something known as VACR—violence against women advocate case review. VACR is a way of analyzing how sexual assaults are treated in […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Police board votes for a review of sexual assault cases
The bulk of the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners meeting on Monday, June 20, was devoted to a presentation from Sunny Marriner, who joined the Zoom meeting shortly after it began. Marriner has been helping and advocating for survivors of sexual assault for 25 years, and appeared before the police board to talk about “Violence […]
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Halifax Regional Police 2022-23 budget demystified (but not defunded)
To really understand the police budget means starting with the acronyms, not the numbers. HRP—the Halifax Regional Police department—wanted more money in its budget this year. HRP told its governing Board of Police Commissioners, the BOPC, which agreed with the department, so then the BOPC went to its higher power: HRM, the Halifax Regional Municipality. […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
What defunding the police means in Halifax
On Monday, January 17 the final report from the defining defunding the police subcommittee of the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners was presented at the commissioners’ virtual meeting. The 218-page report is the culmination of months of work by committee members El Jones, Tari Ajadi, Julia Rodgers, Harry Critchley and others. “The report is the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Police board seeks independent advice on independent review of shelter siege
Exactly two months after the shelter siege of August 18, Halifax’s Board of Police Commissioners met to discuss the possibility of an independent review of police actions that day. A petition calling for such a review was started by the East Coast Prison Justice Society and signed by nearly 5,000 people over the past eight […]