RCMP fear Halifax may fire them

Thursday, February 25, 2010 CBC NEWS:

Senior RCMP officers in the Halifax area are scrambling to prepare for a report from the city's police commission that they believe might put them out of a job. The Mounties believe the report will recommend an expansion of the Halifax regional police force at the expense of the RCMP. Currently, 178 RCMP officers patrol areas outside central Halifax, such as Sackville and Cole Harbour. The Board of Police Commissioners, made up of three regional councillors and three citizens, conducted a four-year review of police services in the region. Now, Halifax regional council is about to decide whether the municipality really needs two police forces.The results of the review will be handed to council in private on Monday.

"I think it's just good business," Halifax regional police Chief Frank Beazley said Wednesday of the review. "You look at the future of policing, you look at how policing should grow, and council several years ago asked for a study, and the study has been carried on by the police board, and I don't know anything else." While confidentiality has been key in the review process, RCMP Halifax District Supt. Darrell Beaton recently sent an internal memo acknowledging that the Mounties might be given a smaller area to police or perhaps even eliminated from local policing. He described the review as "a resourcing methodology." "It was designed to come up with the best method of resourcing policing in [Halifax Regional Municipality]," Beaton said. "So, that's really what the goal is."

In the memo, Beaton said he was informing members now because he believes Halifax regional police have already been told they will be taking over policing for the entire region. But Beazley said that's not true. Beaton and his senior staff are so worried that they took the unusual step of cutting short RCMP spokesman Cpl. Joe Taplin's trip to the Olympics. Taplin was flown back Tuesday to handle public communications on the issue. The top Mounties will also be meeting with Metro-based RCMP members behind closed doors Thursday and Friday. The annual cost to police the municipality is about $74 million. Of that, the RCMP are paid about $20 million. The municipality pays 70 per cent of the Mounties' cost, while the federal government picks up the remaining 30 per cent.