Even before the tragic mass shooting that started overnight in Portapique, N.S. on April 18, the county councilor who represents the area said the municipality was requesting the province complete a police services review.
Tom Taggart is now hopeful a police services review that was approved last month by the department of justice will improve the model for rural policing in Colchester County, and for the people in the small town of Portapique. Taggart says the community is still coming to grips with the fallout from the shooting rampage that left 22 innocent Nova Scotians dead.
“I think the times have changed and we need to ensure we have a better police force here,” said Taggart. “That’s one of the core responsibilities for a municipality… and for a rural municipality it’s likely the top core responsibility.”
The province’s department of justice confirmed they received a letter from Municipality of Colchester on April 16 –two days before the mass shooting happened — requesting the police services review. It’s a coincidence, says Taggart, but the tragedy has only exacerbated his concern that Colchester County wasn’t getting enough services for the money they were spending.
The municipality spends roughly $5 million annually to contract the federal police service –the RCMP — to serve the county, but Taggart says the police members are rarely seen in the community.
“There’s no longer a relationship in the community here with the police,” he said. “They are just a car that drives down the road.”
Retired RCMP officer and Tatamagouche councilor Michael Gregory voted in favour of the police services review and says the community policing model has become transient in Colchester County and other rural areas, where police detachments see a high level of staff turnover.
“We lived in the community that we policed,” said Gregory, who spent 25 years as an RCMP officer in rural Nova Scotia.
“That was the procedure. You lived where you worked, but now it isn’t,” he said. “Of course you can’t force someone to live in the community, even though they are policing it.”
Gregory says the RCMP used to have a policy that officers live in the community they worked but it has since changed, and now the police service has lost that “community connection” which he said was integral to rural policing.
“When that policy stopped… the RCMP lost something,” he said.
Western University criminology professor and former police officer Michael Arntfield says rural policing is challenging for officers because many are dropped into these communities where they have no understanding of the history and culture of the area and the layout of the land.
“There’s no question that the Nova Scotia tragedy is really a microcosm of a larger systemic problem with respect to staffing in rural areas in Canada,” said Arntfield. “There are very few small town, rural police departments left in Canada anymore. They (small towns) just don’t have the tax base to be able to fund all the specialty units and training that are now mandated.”
Taggart was adamant the call for the review has nothing to do with the police members on the ground but says it relates more to the changing crime dynamics in rural areas and points to the 2019 census survey that shows violent crimes in rural municipalities are up 23 percent in Canada.
“This is a national issue, you know, crime is rising and our resources are falling, it’s a national issue,” he said. “And we can’t keep kicking the can down the road anymore. We need to address it.”
Taggart says while the province has agreed to conduct a review, the municipality has also spoken with Truro police regarding a possible policing contract.
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