Saint John mayor quits police commission to comment on reform, 'broken' relationship with union

Saint John's mayor has resigned from the city's police commission to freely share his opinions on police reform.

Don Darling announced he was leaving the commission in an online post Monday.

In the post, he said governance rules have previously stopped him from voicing opinion and "sharing observations" about how best to reform the city's police force, and he wants to spend his last six months as mayor avoiding "barriers and restrictions" placed through board rules. 

"It allows me to to be unfiltered and talk about the types of reforms that I believe are necessary," he said in an interview Monday. "It's about being able to speak freely ... and be blunt and very honest with citizens in this community."

Darling said needed police reforms are not happening fast enough, specifically in terms of narrowing the scope of the police force's role in the community, and addressing systemic racism.

"It's about having meaningful conversation about policing, keeping the peace, having police get back to core policing, having conversations about housing, food security, mental health, drug and addiction support," he said.

The police commission did not return a request for interview by publication time.

'Broken' relationship

In the post, Darling said he believes the police force needs to be more transparent, but did not specify how.

He also called for a better relationship between management and the police union.

"It's broken today, not sustainable financially," he said.

He said the consequences of this relationship is that "we're going to continue to frame this conversation by the union as simply needing more and more and more money."

In an interview, Saint John Police Association president and police officer Duane Squires said he disagrees with Darling on this point, and says the union does not ask for more money than they deserve.

However he agrees that reform is needed. Specifically, making sure police are responding only to calls where they are needed, not to issues like small traffic accidents and when someone finds a needle on the ground.

Squires said another aspect of reform would be narrowing the police's involvement in mental health calls, allowing mental health professionals and social workers to take the lead.

He said there is a link between how much police get paid and how much work is expected of them.

"The more things that get downloaded to us, the more work you do, we do argue that we should be paid more," Squires said. "A review of the types of calls that we go to would be great if there's other organizations that step up and actually deal with the issues outside of Monday to Friday at the force."

He said the force is already trying to connect to the community, but acknowledges more work needs to be done.