Halifax approved money for permanent police offices in Beechville, one of the oldest Black communities in Nova Scotia. The RCMP has now told the city the officers can work from their cars. On Wednesday the Board of Police Commissioners voted unanimously to say it is not satisfied.
The municipality set aside about $2 million for two teams of six RCMP officers, one for Fall River and one for the Beechville-Lakeside-Timberlea area, on the understanding that each would work out of a physical office. The RCMP then told the board it will not open a Fall River office, and that the Beechville team will run as a “pilot project”, the Halifax Examiner reported, working from the Upper Tantallon detachment. A third promised expansion, for Eastern Passage, is also in question.
The board’s motion expresses disappointment over “partnership security” and “public trust”, and asks chair Greg O’Malley to write to Nova Scotia’s justice minister and Halifax RCMP leadership for a written account of how the decision was made. It also directs the municipality’s public safety commissioner to explore whether Halifax Regional Police, the city’s own force, could provide the community policing instead.
“We’re not content with the pathway that we’re on,” O’Malley said.
“I want an answer”
The RCMP’s explanation has changed with the setting. Meaghan Stewart, the director of administration for Nova Scotia RCMP headquarters, told the board that “police officers have the ability to really work from their cars.” She said the force used to run community offices in these areas, then “stopped that way of policing”, and that calls for service in Eastern Passage, Fall River and Beechville are going down. Inspector Neil Wentzell said the RCMP “can’t pay for a new detachment in that community right now” in Fall River.
Vice-chair Becky Kent put the question the board is now pressing: “I want an answer.” O’Malley said he was “quite perplexed” by the pilot idea, which in two and a half years on the board he had not heard before. Assistant Commissioner Dan Morrow, who leads Nova Scotia RCMP, acknowledged the original funding request had not specified money for office space and called the earlier public messaging “in error”, CBC reported.
For Black Nova Scotians, the offices were never only about real estate. When Halifax RCMP presented the request in 2024, it said the satellite offices would follow the model it called “successful” in North Preston, another historic Black community, and fit recommendations from Scot Wortley’s report on street checks in Halifax. Whether a team that drives in from another community meets the promise those offices carried is the question the board has put to the RCMP in writing.
Beechville residents have not yet been heard in this round. The board’s letters are the next step, and the public safety commissioner’s review of a municipal alternative follows.
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