Inmates pace a Toronto jail on Feb. 24, 2011. Halifax is poised to become the first city in Canada to make itse police blotter public.Peter Power/The Globe and Mail
A read of the daily police blotter in Halifax reveals little of the crooks and crimes officers are chasing: "Greetings. HRP [Halifax Regional Police] responded to 181 calls for service. There were no calls of note. Thanks," officer Rob Lowther wrote in the police's regular e-mail to reporters Tuesday afternoon.
The cryptic reporting is about to change: Halifax is poised to become the first city in Canada to make its entire police blotter public because its force now wants citizens and the media to know what it is up to.
"It's for greater transparency," says police spokesman Sergeant Pierre Bourdages, about a gradual trend in Halifax to communicate better with residents.
The officer says that by the end of the year, the department hopes to have a detailed online account of every call officers respond to. The blotter will be posted every 12 hours and include the time, date, street, nature of call and a small description of what transpired.
Currently, police send out news releases only about charges that have been laid or other significant events.
Sgt. Bourdages notes the public blotter is still a work in progress. Measures have to be taken, for example, to ensure victims' privacy is protected.
He says his force could find no other police department in Canada that is doing something similar, although the practice is common in the United States.
The genesis was the Mayor's Roundtable on Violence, initiated in 2007 by former Halifax mayor, Peter Kelly. There were calls for more transparent reporting to the public.
The roundtable was struck as a result of concerns of growing violence in the city, which has not really abated. In 2011, Halifax had the second-highest homicide rate in the country for metropolitan areas after Winnipeg. Gun crime is an issue as are assaults and binge-drinking.
"We were trying to have … more detailed and more realistic [information] as to what police actually responding to in the course of day," said Sgt. Bourdages.
The police blotter initiative was helped along, too, by crusading reporter Tim Bousquet, who writes for a weekly Halifax newspaper. Mr. Bousquet had worked for American newspapers. When he moved to Halifax, he was struck by the fact that the calls were not documented and that it was left up to the individual officer to decide whether he or she thought an incident was newsworthy.
He mocked police on Twitter: "Cops went to 190 calls last night, did nothing. Why are we paying them?"
He noted with some concern that a series of swarming incidents around the Halifax Common in 2010 were considered to be routine by police. They were not mentioned to the public until one of the victims, who had been hospitalized, alerted the media.
Halifax police are trying to change. Last month, as part of the transparency effort, police launched an online "crime mapping" tool that allows Haligonians to track five specific crimes – robberies, assaults, break-and-enters, vehicle thefts and thefts from vehicles – by street name or neighbourhood.
This equips people with the ability to make informed decisions about their behaviour in an area, such as locking their cars if they notice a rash of thefts from vehicles.
City Councillor Linda Mosher sits on the Board of Police Commissioners and is supportive of moves that give residents the opportunity to make informed decisions about their activities.
She has received only one complaint about the crime mapping. It was from a real-estate agent who was worried that house values would go down in certain neighbourhoods that report a lot of crime.
But, generally, she believes better communication by police with the public could lead to citizens reporting back to police suspicious activities around their homes.
"So, as much information that we can give to citizens – I think we can start to prevent some crimes and citizens can be prepared," she says.
As Halifax police weigh greater communication with citizens, Regina police have their own social media struggles. The department disabled public comments on its Facebook page because of threats posted against officers after a pit bull was shot dead during a police chase of an assault suspect.
The Regina police union wants comments that threaten officers to be prohibited.
With a report from The Canadian Press