Note: This is the first of two articles about the recent firing of three Cape Breton Regional Police Service officers and I’m going to begin by saying there is much I do not know about this case — and I’m using the term “this case” to encompass both former ConstableRead More

Note: This is the second of two articles on the recent firing of three Cape Breton Regional Police Service officers. You can read Part I here — and you probably should because we’re just going to dive right in where we left off.   Were the cops involved the staffkenneyRead More

Thanks to a Spectator reader for reminding me that this article — written last year during police budget discussions — remains pertinent in 2019. Last year at this time, Cape Breton Regional Police Service (CBRPS) Chief Peter McIsaac made the case for what he termed a “slight” $763,650 (2.9%) increaseRead More

Mission creep This was the front page of Wednesday’s Cape Breton Post: “Wow” I thought. “They sure are creepy — I wonder who caught them?” Only it turns out the people lurking in the shrubbery in the skull balaclavas and sunglasses are not the creeps — they’re the creep catchers.Read More

I’ve got to start going to the CBRM board of police commissioners meetings. Thanks to Tom Ayers’ LocalExpress report, I got to experience Tuesday’s meeting secondhand and it was almost as good as being there — I could just about hear the excitement in Police Chief Peter McIsaac’s voice asRead More

It all started with a sentence in a story about one of the men charged in the Cape Breton Regional Police’s “John Be Gone” undercover sting operation. You remember John Be Gone — initiated after complaints from downtown Sydney businesses about sex workers on Charlotte Street, it saw two femaleRead More

In my never-ending quest to discover just what $25 million buys the Cape Breton Regional Municipality in terms of police protection, I recently visited the police force web site, which features this little collage of photos in its header: Yes, our CBRM cops, calling in expired plates (left), patrolling wooded areasRead More

Remember that brief swirl of controversy around the mysterious renaming of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s Civic Centre to “City Hall?” A front-page story in the Cape Breton Post on March 6 saying the issue would be on the agenda of that day’s General Committee Meeting (placed there by District 6Read More

I’ve been doing some reading about the sub judice rule — you know it, I’m sure you do, it’s the rule invoked by public officials who say, “I can’t comment on that, it’s before the courts.” My research was inspired by Cape Breton Regional Police Services Chief Peter McIsaac, who bothRead More

The Cape Breton Regional Municipality has more police officers than it can afford. Don’t look at me, I’m not the one who said it—it’s the considered opinion of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality Task Force, or The Mayor’s Task Force, a group formed in 2013 to “make recommendations regarding theRead More