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Uhhhh so, Lisa Blackburn is one of HRM Council’s three publicly-elected voices on the Halifax Police Board of Commissioners, and this guy is the head of the Halifax Police Officers Association. Just uh. Wanna put that out there for anybody in District 14 who is pro-abolition.
I know its a memorial tweet but it is also propaganda, and we need to understand really clearly what the role of this guy and the organization he heads is, and why its not great that an elected who has power in the defunding conversation is retweeting him: https://rabble.ca/news/2020/06/how-police-unions-present-barriers-change-canada
Municipal elections are next month, by the by.
This is the same Dean Steinburg, also: https://twitter.com/TheRickHoweShow/status/1271460198763442180?s=20
Here are some of the things the Halifax Police union he is head of has accomplished on their latest collective bargaining agreement, including making sure reprimands only remain on officer records for 3 years: https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/city-hall/halifax-releases-police-unions-collective-agreement/
He has been making nice words lately about being “ready to participate in effort to improve policing”, but keep in mind that that collective bargaining agreement speaks to a very different set of priorities, and also reform doesn’t work. https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/news/local/halifax-police-union-keen-to-participate-in-efforts-to-improve-policing-president-says-499463/
All in all it should be unsettling to us that one of the only three people elected by the public at large who sits on the Halifax Police Board is uncritically retweeting what amounts to Thin Blue Line propaganda from this guy.
It is of the same crop of copaganda as this whole entire essay that the president of the RCMP’s police association (basically Steinburg’s national-level equivalent) vomited into the Herald back in June: https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/local-perspectives/brian-sauve-rcmp-acted-heroically-to-stop-gunmans-nova-scotia-rampage-465442/
I’m not trying to get Lisa Blackburn “cancelled” or anything, I just think its important given her role on the Police Board, the current defunding conversation, and the fact that she is up for re-election, that this not go unnoticed or without context.
(If you happen to feel the same, please retweet this thread in addition to liking it, just to pass the info on.)
