The Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) is set to become the first jurisdiction in Canada to define the phrase “defunding the police”.
The move comes as the result of a 218-page report which features 36 recommendations to reallocate resources away from the police to more appropriate service providers.
The report, Defunding the Police: Defining the Way Forward for HRM, was authored by the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners Subcommittee to Define Defunding the Police.
The Police Board established the subcommittee to “review relevant research and conduct community engagements to allow citizens to express their view regarding the definition of defunding police.”
The chair of the 15-person subcommittee is El Jones, a professor, journalist, and author.
Jones – a powerhouse in social movements focused on anti-racism, human rights, and decarceration – took on the role in September 2020. Her appointment was a response to the growing public support for defunding, particularly in light of the murders of Black Americans Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, as well as the police-involved death, in Toronto, of Regis Korchinski-Paquet.
“Consider where we put our money”
The Subcommittee’s report relies on data from the 2019 “Street Checks” report, which University of Toronto criminologist Scott Wortley did for the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission.
Wortley concluded “the Halifax Regional Police force’s use of street checks disproportionately affected Black people in the municipality.”
Street checks are the practice of police identifying or collecting information at a random stop site, to be entered in a database for future use. Wortley found that Black people are six times more likely to be stopped at a street check than white people.
In a 2003 decision, the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission found police committed racial discrimination when they pulled over former boxer Kirk Johnson several times, for no reason.
El Jones and the other authors of the defunding report want society “to consider where we … put our money, recognizing that we resource the things that we value.” Nova Scotians, they say, should “consider whether there are better, more effective options for addressing and intervening to address crime and social harm.”
Part of the process the subcommittee recommends is called de-tasking, which means: “identifying roles or functions of the police that they are not equipped to do, and transferring those tasks to the appropriate service provider, agency, or organization.”
The subcommittee argues that “policing—and the use of force—does not prevent harm, often does not meet the needs of victims (particularly in cases of sexual assault or domestic violence), and does not adequately rehabilitate or reintegrate those who have caused harm.”
Key to understanding the roots of police inequity, the subcommittee writes, is the policing of Indigenous peoples, land, and resources.
More money for cops while crime is decreasing
A unique barrier to police accountability in the Halifax Regional Municipality is that the area is served both by the Halifax Regional Police (HRP) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
The municipality spent more than $125 million on policing in 2019/20, for a total of $265 per capita. The report notes that the amount increases to $393 per capita when RCMP funding is included.
The report also relies on data from a virtual community survey— “What does defunding look like in the HRM?” — which collected more than 2,300 responses last summer. Fifty-seven per cent of respondents support the idea of defunding police.
A public consultation session also took place last June on Zoom, where citizens weighed in over the course of six hours to help develop a definition of defunding the police.
Key to the report’s rationale is the fact that while police organizations constantly request more money to keep operations running, crime is decreasing in Halifax.
According to data obtained by the report’s authors, the number of phone calls from members of the public seeking police assistance has gone down by nearly 25 per cent over the past two years alone.
In 2019, police received 2,383 calls for assistance per week. In 2020, that number dropped below 2,000. While data for 2021 is only available until the end of August, the weekly average up to that point was 1,795 calls per week.
Funding for the Halifax Regional Police has steadily increased over the last several years. To find the money municipal councilors has to find cuts elsewhere in their budget. For instance, they cut funding to local public libraries.
In 2018-19, Halifax Regional Police staffers made up nearly half, 49 per cent, of Halifax’s Sunshine List of public employees making more than $100,000 per year, in 2018/19. That proportion dropped to 43 per cent in 2020-21.
A move the report praises as “practical” was the June 2019 decision by Halifax regional council to rescind a roughly $350,000 it had previously allocated to purchase armoured vehicles. Council reallocated those funds to diversity and inclusion offices in the municipality, as well as to other anti-Black racism programs.
All 36 recommendations in the subcommittee’s report have been endorsed by Wellness Within, a Nova Scotia non-profit organization “working for reproductive justice, prison abolition, and health equity.”
Wellness Within is calling on regional council to adopt each and every one of the recommendations put forward in the report.
The reproductive justice group is particularly supportive of the subcommittee’s recommendations on the best way to support sexual assault victims.
El Jones’s subcommittee proposes that the police must refer survivors of sexual assault to a non-police community organization. The subcommittee also wants the funding gaps in sexual assault prevention and response programs closed.
Much of what El Jones and her colleagues have to say could be of interest to other cities and towns with diverse populations.
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