Police commission wants body cam, Wortley report answers
The Halifax police board of commissioners will meet online Thursday amid a backdrop of rallies calling for police defunding and an online petition demanding that officers wear body cameras.
The commission and the two police forces it provides independent, civilian oversight for have come under intense scrutiny recently.
Tony Mancini (Dartmouth East-burnside), one of three regional councillors on the seven-member board, said previous HRP chief JeanMichel Blais was not a fan of body cams.
“His concern at the time was, not only the overall expense but the storage of information,” Mancini said. “It’s got to be catalogued, it’s got to be stored, who ends up owning it. The cost of that was significant at the time.”
Mancini said research shows that the technology has advanced significantly since Halifax Regional Police decided three years ago not to follow through with a pilot project that it said would cost an estimated $1.4 million annually to equip 50 officers with cameras for a five-year evaluation.
In the wake of a recent online petition that gained nearly 110,000 supporters, HRP has said it will review the potential value of body cams.
“The cost has come down, too,” Mancini said. “I have always been in favour of body-worn cameras for police officers for both our citizens and our police officers. You have situations that have gone on in our municipality now that I think it would have been an advantage to knowing all the information that a body-worn camera would provide.”
Mancini said “we need to get the facts,” citing the expense of body cameras as likely being prohibitive now in the COVID-19 era of lapsing revenues.
“How much would it cost, what would a pilot look like, what is that new technology that is out there and I believe that our citizens and I believe that our police officers that I speak to, they would welcome that opportunity. Many other municipalities and police agencies use them. The prime minister recently announced that RCMP will be doing it so I think the timing is right for this conversation.”
Mancini will move Thursday for a municipal staff report to detail the feasibility of a body worn video pilot program for HRP and Halifax District RCMP patrol officers that addresses costs, benefits and technological requirements.
The theory is that the body cams could provide both more police accountability and protect officers from false allegations.
Some of the issues that will fall under the staff report include a protocol on officers’ ability to turn off the camera and who owns the information gathered — the police force, the municipality or the police commission.
“Obviously, we would need a jurisdictional scan of other police forces and what policies do they have around turning them off and ownership.”
Mancini will also make a motion requesting that HRP Chief Dan Kinsella and RCMP Chief Supt. Janis Gray provide written updates that detail the status of the Wortley report recommendations including plans, action steps and progress at each monthly meeting of the board of commissioners and provide a detailed quarterly update to regional council.
“What I’m asking for is that we should have all the action items on a checklist and we can identify which ones have been completed and which ones we’re working on and which ones we haven’t started yet, so we have that scorecard,” Mancini said.
“I don’t see that to be labour intensive. Once you establish that checklist, at every meeting we have it and it should be on our (municipal) website somewhere ... so that residents can actually see where we are with the Wortley report. With all that is going on around us right now, this Wortley report is an extremely important document.”
Scot Wortley, a Toronto criminologist, delivered a comprehensive report in March 2019 on police street checks in Halifax, finding that Blacks were nearly six times more likely to be profiled than whites and that young Black males between the ages of 15 and 34 are by far the group most exposed to police street check activity.
Wortley concluded that the practice of street checks eroded trust in law enforcement and led to the criminalization of Black youth.
Last month, Wortley told The Chronicle Herald that even after the province banned street checks, there is no evidence to show that fewer Black Nova Scotians are being racially profiled by police.
Speaking to regional council Tuesday, Sen. Wanda Thomas Bernard agreed with Wortley’s assessment.
“There is a real shift that needs to happen in the culture of our policing and the racial profiling,” Bernard said. “Even though street checks have stopped, racial profiling hasn’t. We need to own that and address that and I don’t think they’ve (police) really done that yet. That becomes a conversation that needs to happen.”
Bernard emphasized the necessity for police forces, the municipality and the province to follow through on promised plans of action surrounding the Wortley report.