Our municipality “is a safe community,” the officer in charge of Halifax Regional Police’s criminal investigation division assured residents yesterday.
But Supt. Mike Burns also noted that the Halifax region is seeing “clusters of high-profile crimes that involve a high degree of violence or the use of firearms.
“That’s certainly of a concern to the police agency and it’s quite recently a concern to the larger community,” he said in an interview with Metro Halifax, referring to some of the violence that has hit home recently, including three murders in May alone and a highly publicized, widely speculated drug war.
“These crimes have put an additional burden on us,” he said.
Burns couldn’t get into details about how the regional police force is dealing with these crimes, pointing out that some “bad guys” read the newspaper, but said some officers are being redeployed from their regular assignments “in order to supplement the units that are feeling the brunt of this recent activity.”
That includes homicides, he said, such as that of 36-year-old Tanya Jean Brooks of Halifax, 33-year-old Gordon Alexander Murray of Dartmouth, and a 19-year-old man who died last week after being shot, reportedly in the forehead, on a North Preston street.
“Some may suggest that means that the areas that you’re leaving don’t get the attention that they require, but we monitor that very closely,” Burns said.
He also pointed out that Halifax Regional Police work closely with Halifax RCMP, which means there are more resources for both forces to draw from. In total, there are about 700 police officers working across Halifax Regional Municipality, he said.
