It’s been nearly two years since the Aug. 18, 2021 protest against encampment evictions in HRM.
Halifax’s Board of Police Commissioners is now moving forward with an independent civilian review — focusing on how police handled the day.
“This particular review will help guide us, I hope, in future decision-making, future governance,” said Board of Police Commissioners chair Becky Kent. “And the public needs us to do that, we need to be able to do that successfully.”
Toronto law firm Cooper, Sandler, Shime & Schwartzentruber LLP has been hired to conduct the review.
“At a systemic level, we’ll make findings and recommendations to the board, and then the board hopefully will develop a strategic plan to adopting recommendations that they think make sense to them and a strategy for implementing them in a timely way,” senior firm member Mark Sandler told Global News.
Sandler says the $250,000 review will examine what lessons can be learned in the aftermath of the event — an event that civilians in attendance remember as violent.
“I don’t think anyone in the community expected a 10-year-old child to be pepper-sprayed on Spring Garden Road at 2 p.m. on Aug. 18, 2021,” says protest attendee Tari Ajadi. “I don’t think that they expected that citizens would be brutalized for standing up for unhoused residents who are simply trying to survive.”
Ajadi is a board member with the East Coast Prison Justice Society, an activist group that petitioned for this review in October 2021.
“Our vision was to try to hold Halifax Regional Police and the Board of Police Commissioners, HRM to account for the events of Aug. 18, 2021 and to get some real answers as to what precisely they were expecting, how this could have been handled better and how in future we could avoid a situation like this again.”
Also in attendance at the protest was Mount Allison University Prof. Ardath Whynacht with her young daughter.
Soon after arriving, she had to leave due to tear gas that would have put her child at risk.
“I was holding my two-year-old daughter and realizing that this is one of the core images that she’s going to form her understanding of policing with,” said Whynacht. “But I have to say that, at least, that day she’s going to see an honest depiction of the way that police are operating and the way that they are destroying the items of unhoused residents and responding with violence.”
Protesters pushed back against police when city workers attempted to remove an encampment from the grounds of the old city library downtown.
The chaotic scene resulted in dozens of arrests.
“It left me unsettled,” said Kent.
Alongside being the Board of Police Commissioners chair, she represents District 3 as its city councillor and received a great deal of response to the events surrounding the protest.
“I was not able to sleep for a number of days, actually. Even going into it it was uncomfortable because we knew that this was a challenging time for those who are experiencing homelessness and living rough,” said Kent. “But, we have a responsibility and legislative authority and legislative mandate to look at this from a public safety perspective.”
For those who petitioned for the review, the hope is to see both Halifax Regional Police and the board of commissioners held to account.
“We have to ask ourselves, what credibility do you have if you keep repeating the same kinds of actions and you keep funding the people that cause people a lot of harm,” said Ajadi.
Yet, some activists don’t think another review will present anything that isn’t already known.
“Our board of police commissioners and our city council often pay for very expensive reviews and reports and then they either don’t act on any recommendations that challenge the status quo, or they use those reports as a way to make it look like they’re doing something,” Whynacht said on the matter.
Kent says she believes very strongly that the findings of the review will be taken seriously.
“Our board wants to do all that we can do as a good governance body to support the public safety of HRM,” she said.
The review is scheduled to be completed by May 2024, and those who were in attendance are being encouraged to participate by sharing their experiences with the reviewers.
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