Written by Gena Dufour

Thumbnail Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

If you’re at all politically inclined, you might have recently heard about the ‘De-fund the Police’ movement. In essence, the culmination of decades of police brutality and abuse (particularly against people of colour) has led activists to say ‘enough is enough.’ Campaigns have begun and rallies have taken place to literally de-fund police systems internationally.

This issue is controversial and somewhat misunderstood. With misconceptions all over the place, it’s easy to get lost in the media. So what does “de-funding the police” really mean? Some extremists have proposed completely dismantling police services, but the most realistic request is to stop increasing police budgets every year and instead, divert that money to social services. The rationale here is that at the most fundamental level, police are ill-equipped to deal with a lot of the things they are asked to show up for. For instance, police answer mental health calls, domestic violence incidents, suicide attempts, addictions or overdose incidents, and other social problems that require medical or psychological intervention. Every day, police officers are asked to intervene on scenes that DO need mental health or de-escalation experts, but DON’T actually need law enforcement. However, the resources for these services aren’t there, and so police are perpetually called to step in. Instead of funding the police to show up at domestic violence calls or overdoses, ‘defund the police’ activists are asking that this money can be used to fund social services, like mental health and addictions services, transition houses and other housing organizations, and even education and prevention services.

Logo by the Halifax Regional Police

Right here in Halifax, we’ve had a turbulent year on our own. Following the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the city of Halifax decorated the streets with ‘BLM’ messages and made it so buses now stream ‘Black Lives Matter’ on their destination signs. This all seems well and good but as some have argued, it’s neither original nor really meaningful without real, concrete evidence for systemic change in this province.

Completely disregarding the request for funds to be diverted, the Halifax city council recently voted to increase funding to the Halifax Regional Police by 2.7%. This spike is more than $1 million more than was recommended last year. This increase means the police budget is jumping from $86.3 million in the current fiscal year to $88.6 million for 2021-2022. The RCMP budget was also proposed to increase by $1.5 million, leaving them with nearly $30 million for the next fiscal year as well.

Opinions are, as always, mixed about the appropriateness of this budget increase. Reports from June of last year show that half of the city’s highest-paid workers work for the HRP. However, an interesting addition to this year’s budget is the funding for research and use of police body cameras in Halifax. Body cams are still a really new technology that has yet to undergo full empirical vetting to determine their effectiveness. Quite conversely, in fact, some of the literature that does exist suggests that they’re not as effective as people think they are.

This wouldn’t be such a slap in the face if it weren’t for the fact that the HRP has, for years, chronically underfunded victims’ services. Despite the fact that domestic violence is on the rise due to COVID-19, HRP victim’s services funding was actually cut by $50,000 because of the pandemic. This is particularly ironic since victim’s services and the HRP polygraph (lie-detection) funding is effectively the same, meaning these services both get the same amount of money. Ask any forensic psychologist and they’ll tell you that lie-detectors are more or less hot garbage, and yet they experienced no budget cuts this year.

But where else could that money go? Well, there are a couple of places that could use the funding. First, Nova Scotia’s child welfare system is in a financial crisis due to underfunding (something the council has known about for quite some time). Second, there is not enough addictions and mental health funding to the point where mental health clinics are being forced to shut down. Not to mention Indigenous and Mi’kmaw services are consistently neglected. Moreover, domestic violence victims have nowhere to go, as transition houses have always been underfunded, and offenders who are being released from jails and prisons in Nova Scotia are facing homelessness during the pandemic.

Of course, it’s easy to be critical of decisions we have no say over. Council also voted to increase the funding for public libraries, but no one’s going to complain about that. Moreover and quite surprisingly, in November, Council greenlighted the beginning of a ‘defund the police’ committee (still waiting for an update there). That being said, the HRP is notoriously behind the times and a budget increase of millions of dollars to police services, all amidst pleas for the opposite, feels tone-deaf. Council likes to say they are listening, but this feels like ignoring.

Completely Tone-Deaf: Halifax Councillors Vote for Increased Police Budgets

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