The Halifax RCMP opened their doors to thank the community for supporting them in the debate over policing in HRM.
Open houses were held in the Sackville, Cole Harbour and Tantallon detachments on Thursday afternoon. Sackville detachment supervisor Cpl. Angela Corscadden said the events were meant to bring the police and the community together.
“It’s an opportunity … for the members of Sackville detachment to say thank you to the community who supported us,” she said.
“And an opportunity for the community to ask questions, if they had any residual questions.”
Halifax regional council recently scrapped a Board of Police Commissioners’ recommendation to expand Halifax Regional Police to the entire municipality. Currently, HRM has an integrated model of policing, with HRP in the urban core and the RCMP patrolling outlying areas.
The recommendation was met with very vocal resistance in the communities currently served by the RCMP, as well as both rural and urban councillors.
Corscadden said the support from the community was “overwhelming.”
“It’s quite empowering for the police officers to be receiving the thanks and greetings from the public,” she said.
“(It was) very pleasing, very favourable, and very gratifying. We know that we have positive approval ratings; we know that we do a good job. It’s just nice to have that reinforced.”
John MacMullin, who was a resident in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality when they opted to drop the Mounties in 2000, said HRM has the best of both worlds with the HRP and RCMP.
“We have a perfect model, one balanced off with the other,” said MacMullin, who splits his time between Sydney and Halifax.
“And if we have a crisis here, we have outside resources that are going to come in to help us.”
