Biker hit by cops gets arraigned

Police patrol cars at HRP Northbrook Training Centre. Photo by Antonia Zwissler

37-year-old man back in court June 23

by Antonia Zwissler

Tuesday May 26, on a rare sunny morning, courtroom 3 at the Halifax Provincial Court is like a principal’s office with an open door policy. The principal is a judge with a dyed blonde bob.

Starting at 9:30 a.m. people who have been charged sit facing the judge. They wait on four rows of benches, mostly on the side closest to the exit. One of them is a man in a black hoodie with a yellow “Budget Movers” logo, accompanied by a woman in a grey headscarf. She holds a Ziploc bag full of documents. A few stony young men sit alone. One young man is accompanied by an older man in a 902 Man Up shirt. One by one, the accused are called to the front of the room.

They’re all under the watch of two sheriffs, one standing by the door, and one by the judge.

A woman with long pink nails is called up and then told to sit back down because her interpreter hasn’t arrived. When it’s actually her turn, the judge tells her she’s there for harassing someone. Would she prefer her proceedings be translated into Spanish from English or French? English. She gets an official court sticky note with steps for how to access her own police files. It’s over and she leaves.

This official reading of charges with notes for next steps is called an arraignment. There are dozens of people going in and out of the courtroom this morning. Some entering pleas, some being arraigned.

The sheriff by the judge fills a cup of water and hands it to the sheriff by the door. He in turn hands it to a woman with tired eyes in the back row.

A man in a pale blue t-shirt with tattoos on his face and neck and arms stands before the court. He was rejected by legal aid, for reasons the court doesn’t understand. He sits back down.

One person entering doesn’t have to wait at all. They’re wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt and are very pale. They’re escorted in by two additional sheriffs. When this person mutters out of turn, no one reacts. Usually the judge keeps everyone in line, but this one is different. The extra guards face the accused with rapt attention, one with her back to the judge, one with her back to the exit. When Sweatpants gets their next court date, they’re led out by the arm.

The proceedings aren’t alphabetical. The sheriff at the door says it’s based on who has counsel.

This explains why some people have been waiting and watching the others, they’re waiting for their lawyers.

Almost everyone has filed out of the courtroom when a thin man with buzzed hair is called up near the end, at around 10:45 a.m.

He’s wearing a grey hoodie. He’s 37 years old.

Like everyone else, he walked up the sunlit steps by the Old Burying Ground to get to the court’s airport security metal detector entryway. He took everything out of his pockets for the metal detector. Gathered his personal items and jammed them all back into his pockets under the close watch of the guards. He went up the stairs to courtroom 3.

He’s there to be formally charged for theft under $5,000 and possession of stolen items under $5,000, for shoplifting committed exactly a month earlier, on April 26.

His charges are read to him. He prefers English.

After the theft and during the possession he’s being charged for, a pursuing cop hit him with a patrol car before the cop crashed their car into the power pole between 2108 and 2114 Maynard Street.

None of this is mentioned today, that’s not what this court appearance is about. The judge lets him know his next appearance is on June 23. What happens then will depend on whether he can access legal aid in time—a service with a backlog. The judge asks if he’s ever accessed legal aid before. Once, he says. He specifies it was a long time ago.

The theft and the possession in question count as two charges. He has four more charges, for two more counts of theft under $5,000, and two of possession. Those offences happened on March 21 and April 8. That arraignment was on May 11, he’s in court next for those on June 8.

The fact that a Halifax Regional Police officer him hard enough to cause a fracture, send him to the hospital, and fold the back wheel of his bike wasn’t relevant to the arraignment hearing.

The Serious Incident Response Team (SiRT) looks into serious injuries that may have been caused by police in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. SiRT is investigating the case, which opened on April 26, the same day as the serious incident. The case is still ongoing over a month later.

“When attempting to stop the suspect, the police [officer driving the police] vehicle made contact with the bicycle. The male was transported to hospital where he was diagnosed with a fracture,” reads the SiRT press release.

This is the fourth SiRT investigation into Halifax Regional Police this year, all four of which are still ongoing.

Council says no to Austin’s free ferries motion

by Matt Stickland

The most reliable part of Halifax Transit are ferries, although over the past five months they’ve been reliably unreliable.

Since 2026 began, Halifax has been down a ferry, the Vincent Coleman, as the city waited for proprietary spare parts to be flown in from Europe and clear customs.
The Vincent Coleman returned to service on May 19 and the ferry from Alderney to Halifax returned to it’s scheduled 15 minutes service.

That lasted 3 days.

On May 22, the Christopher Stannix broke down in the exact same way that the Coleman did. The city was once again waiting for spare parts to get Halifax ferries back to 15-minute service.

As a result of this service disruption at last Tuesday’s council meeting councillor Sam Austin asked his peers to waive ferry fares until 15-minute service is back.
During the debate Austin said he was not one for dramatic motions but that “we are just so past the point of this being a routine situation,” and that council needed to be “more meaningful in support of the service rather than just a public service announcement and ‘sorry.’”

Other councillors chimed into the debate to say that Halifax Transit is so bad that disruptions and unreliability this severe are par for the course for Halifax Transit.
It wouldn’t be fair to give ferry riders a fare break.

Deputy mayor Patty Cuttell gave the example of one of her constituents who frequently can’t get on a bus due to overloads, and then has to pay for an Uber and a fee for picking her child up late from daycare. But in the morning Cuttell’s constituent is still expected to pay the fare for her bus trip on top of her daycare’s late pickup fees.

Austin was asking for this fare reduction without a staff report, so it would have needed to pass with a two-thirds majority. Austin’s motion failed.

Either way, the Stannix was repaired and ferry service is running every 15 minutes again as of last Friday.

Council asks province to redistribute development fees

by Matt Stickland

Back in 2019 council passed a Secondary Municipal Planning Strategy (SMPS) for downtown Dartmouth, in between Portland and Prince Albert Streets and the Halifax Harbour. After the city passed the SMPS came the Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) by-law changes, which changed how the city calculates development fees.

At the same time, this is also the area of the new Sawmill Creek Project. According to the staff report there is a new street being built, Patuo’kn Street, which nearby property owners are paying into because it benefits them. But “the cost sharing does not include the work to the nearby Prince Albert Road/Portland Street/Alderney Drive intersection, nor the Halifax Water work to further daylight Sawmill Creek, as these are not of direct benefit to the land owners.” The whole Sawmill Creek Project is projected to cost just over $25 million, with $14 million of that being paid by the province. The remaining $11.7 million is to be split between the city and the surrounding land owners.

This project needs to be paid for by the land owners and not the greater Dartmouth community because the point of Sawmill Creek Project is that “the community is to have a walkable and cycle-friendly area, increasing the connection between this area and downtown Dartmouth.”

But since “the construction of Patuo’kn Street benefits both existing businesses as well as landowners within Dartmouth Cove, a 50/50 cost sharing between the municipality and the landowners was approved by Regional Council.” Therefore, the surrounding private land owners, not the community, should be responsible for fronting $5,876,500 of the Sawmill project bill.

However, due to the changes to how development charges are calculated, the people who started building before the HAF changes were charged higher fees.
So, to be fair to developers, the city wants to redistribute development fees for the area based on a new model. Some development fees would go up, and some would go down.

The raised fees would predominantly target developments that don’t yet exist, and the higher fees may deter those developments from happening at all. And the city is fronting the money for the Sawmill project and only recoups money when permits are issued. Which could create a budget gap as council is banking on non-guaranteed money to fund critical infrastructure projects.

Mayor Andy Fillmore was the lone vote no. Now the province, which froze development fees in 2023, will need to approve council’s request.