HRM wants to improve community awareness of alternative police response program 

Before expanding an alternative police response program, the Halifax Regional Municipality is focusing on making the community aware of the project.

The Crisis Assistance and Response Service (CARE) is a two-year pilot program launched in October by HRM’s community safety department and Souls Harbour Rescue Mission, a non-profit emergency services organization.

In response to 211 calls, CARE is sent to manage non-violent or clinical calls instead of police officers. These can include mediating public disputes — between neighbours, for example — to help people in distress, and to manage public displays of substance abuse.

Currently, CARE only serves the communities of Central Dartmouth, Cole Harbour and Woodlawn. At an HRM board of police commissioners meeting on Jan. 14, board chair Greg O’Malley said that he’s concerned the program isn’t slated to expand before the end of the pilot period.

HRM community safety director Rachel Boehm said that CARE ‘s 17-member team isn’t being used to its full capacity right now, but it’s unclear if this is because not enough people know about the program or if it doesn’t serve a big enough area.

Before expanding to new areas of the HRM, Boehm wants to increase public awareness about the program. Boehm said she is open to expanding to new areas before the end of the pilot period, if the service isn’t at capacity once more people know about the program.

Right now, the service operates from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. from Monday to Friday. Boehm said she expects the volume of their work to increase once they move to a 24-hour, seven day a week service on Jan. 19.

Still, Boehm said she thinks community awareness is the biggest reason the service isn’t maxed out. She said her focus is making CARE visible to the public.

At the board meeting, District 6 Coun. Tony Mancini offered to help in his community of Dartmouth-East Burnside.

“I think about different community groups that may be able to pass on the message,” Mancini said. “It sounds to me like we’ve been looking for this for years, and
it’s finally here.”

In 2020, amid calls across North America to divert resources away from the police and towards social workers following the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, the board of police commissioners created a subcommittee.

Led by El Jones, a professor and activist at Mount Saint Vincent University, the team came up with 36 recommendations.

One of these called on Halifax Regional Council to “comprehensively explore” partially or fully detasking police in incidents with the unhoused, youth, in gender-based and intimate-partner violence, overdoses, and noise complaints in its Alternatives to Policing review.

The first-quarter results of a new survey on policing in Halifax, published this week, show that the idea behind CARE’s mandate has broad public support, with 86 per cent of respondents “support implementing ‘alternative response models’ in the Halifax region.”

In an interview with the Signal, Jones said that even five years ago, it was “common wisdom” that the police were needed to respond to calls involving mental health and addiction. Jones said it’s a “very successful shift” in public opinion on alternative police response.

“Since we’re all agreed on that, there should be a huge push for the implementation of that very broadly across all communities.”