Nova Scotia political playbook: when in doubt, blame the reporter

When Alonzo Wright was appointed Director of Nova Scotia’s Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT) in December 2022, he gave his first interview to Matthew Byard, the Examiner’s Local Initiatives Reporter. Wright’s appointment as SIRT’s first director of African descent came at a fraught moment in the decade-long existence of the civilian police oversight body, whose […]

It’s time to fix policing, not ‘integrate’ the local Mounties and the HRP

Let’s start with this… Defunding the police is, in many ways, about reinvesting in fundamental, and historically under-funded, community resources… [Our] last recommendations relate to municipal and police budgeting. One of these recommendations is that any funds diverted from the police budget going forward be redistributed through participatory budgeting processes. Defunding the Police: Defining the […]

Defunding the police by increasing funding for the police?

Halifax City council approved a slightly smaller increase for policing than the chief requested. But it’s still an increase. And not the “rethinking” of the role of policing in our society critics are asking for. “We are in a crisis. We are in dire straits. We need to be able to make sure that we […]

Cop confidential

Why is so much of the city’s police budget discussion happening behind closed doors? We can’t say… What really goes on behind closed doors? Do those doors need to be closed? Does the Halifax Regional Police need more money to do its job properly? Those, of course, are different questions, but it’s hard to answer […]

Shopping while strolling

A report by Nova Scotia’s Serious Incident Response Team clears Halifax police officers in the violent arrest of Santina Rao. But it doesn’t even try to explain how what happened at the Walmart that day was allowed to become the confrontation that led to her arrest. The purpose of a SiRT investigation is to determine […]

Councillors cancelled the tank contract. Good. Now what?

We are in a moment. It has forced us to rethink what we mean by policing, and by public safety, and to begin to reimagine a world in which public safety does not necessarily mean a cop with a gun killing someone with whom he is supposedly conducting a “wellness check,” or six cops with […]

Calvin Lawrence: Black Panther Party’s ‘unlikely cub’

His hiring as a Halifax police officer in 1969 happened only because the city feared what might happen if it didn’t at least pay lip service to inclusion. But over the course of his 36-year policing career, Calvin Lawrence proved a more than worthy fighter against racism. Calvin Lawrence remembers the life-altering moment well. It […]

Jian Ghomeshi, Gerald Regan and the court of public opinion

What a wild, weird week! The bodies from the Parliament Hill shootings and the Quebec murder-by-car had not been buried, their meaning not yet processed, when the CBC announced last Sunday it was severing ties with its most famous radio host, Jian Ghomeshi, for reasons unspecified. By that evening, Ghomeshi had specified his version in […]

The journalist’s dilemma: covering breaking news in the Age of Instant

Last Wednesday, I was glued to CBC radio’s coverage of the Ottawa shootings while trying — and failing — to focus on making notes for my upcoming class. At 12:54 p.m., as a CBC reporter relayed the shocking news shots may have been fired inside the Rideau Mall — meaning there might be “more than […]

Rehtaeh Parsons, the media and social media: it's complicated

It’s complicated. The Canadian Psychiatric Society, among others, publishes guidelines for reporting on youth suicide. Don’t put the word “suicide” in the headline, it says. Don’t give such stories undue prominence. Don’t describe the method. Don’t glorify the victim. The guidelines are designed to reduce the very real risk of copycats. We know many media […]