Police board recommends approval of $101m budget request

Halifax’s Board of Police Commissioners has unanimously recommended approval of a $101.2-million operating budget request by Halifax regional police.

The board, at a meeting Wednesday, also voted in favour of funding the RCMP’s request for 14 new positions and a $600,000 armoured rescue vehicle.

The police will present their budget to Halifax regional council on Feb. 5.

Regional police are asking for $3.2 million more than last year. About 14 per cent of that increase would go towards creating seven new civilian positions.

The armoured rescue vehicle falls under a separate capital budget. The request is being made again after it created controversy in 2020 and was cut.

The RCMP request included funding for new detachments in Beechville and Fall River. Each would be staffed by six Mounties.

Commissioner Virginia Hinch, councillor for the north-end District 8, was still on the fence minutes before the vote.

“Me as a citizen, as a person who has grown up in that community, I have seen how things have been addressed when it comes to us as Blacks dealing with the police,” said Hinch. “My thought was to automatically say no to this budget because I believe that resources can go elsewhere.”

Hinch’s voice broke as she spoke and her fellow commissioners urged her to take her time.

After Hinch spoke, commissioners Yemi Akindojo and Becky Kent urged her to vote in favour.

“Those of us who are councillors, we are not councillors in this moment — we are commissioners,” said Kent. “Despite defund requests, [the police are] not going away, at least not in my generation. They’re necessary.”

Speaking on the RCMP request, commissioner Tony Mancini (District 6, Dartmouth East – Burnside), whose district is not policed by RCMP, said the councillor who represents Fall River‚ Cathy Deagle Gammon, told him she is in favour of the proposed office in that community.

Hinch asked Supt. Don Moser, acting officer in charge of Halifax RCMP, about how much community engagement the RCMP had done in the Beechville area. She cited concern about adding a new police station to a traditionally African Nova Scotian neighbourhood.

Board vice-chair Greg O’Malley asked about the plan for the Beechville office to open in an existing community space. O’Malley said he doesn’t want an important recreational space to be replaced by the RCMP office.

“You have Halifax regional detachment’s commitment that we will work in partnership with the community and HRM to make sure that that model is what they need,” Moser reassured the board.

‘It’s not a tank.’

O’Malley added a third motion to the original agenda, to endorse the purchase of an armoured rescue vehicle. It will cost the capital budget $600,000.

Halifax Regional Police chief Don MacLean, O’Malley, Kent and Mancini, who all favour the purchase, echoed the phrase “it’s not a tank” several times. Kent said she wanted to rectify intentional disinformation from the media.

“There is no mounted weaponry on this thing and it is not a tank,” said CAO Cathy O’Toole.

She also said one of the events that made her support the armoured rescue vehicle request was the shooting at last year’s Africville reunion, at which five people were hit by gunfire.  

Halifax Regional Police chief Don MacLean said police departments in Fredericton, Hamilton and Winnipeg have armoured rescue vehicles. He likened it to a bulletproof vest but said it wouldn’t be used for crowd control or regular patrol.

Next stop: council

Mancini said while the budget is comprehensive, he will have to argue against the police budget when he has his councillor hat on as there are other municipal items he wants to advocate for.

Last year, the police budget accounted for about nine per cent of the municipality’s total operating budget.

In an interview after Wednesday’s meeting, Hinch said, “my heart is all over the place right now, my emotions are all over the place right now, when it comes to what the police are asking for and what my community is asking for.”