Public safety is once again top of mind in Surrey, B.C., following a spate of recent shootings in the city.
Police in Surrey have been called to five shootings since the start of the year. The most recent incident, outside a fast food restaurant on the Surrey-Delta border, took place in broad daylight and left one man seriously hurt.
The Surrey Board of Trade says the violence is affecting the city’s brand, and that its members are raising concerns.
“We’re hearing what is going on? When is this going to end? My kids live here, and what if my child was there or what if my worker was there,” board president Anita Huberman said.
“It really impacts the livability of our city.”
The Surrey RCMP said it is taking the recent shootings seriously, but that the violence must be viewed in a broader context.
“We finished 2023 with a 30 per cent reduction in shots fired from the year before and a 50-per cent reduction in homicides,” said Assistant Commissioner Brian Edwards, officer in charge of the Surrey RCMP.
“We are dealing with a small uptick right now but we are aggressively investigating every single shooting in this community.”
Edwards said police have dedicated resources to “intensive and aggressive investigation” of the shootings, but are also heavily focused on education and prevention.
“That’s why we have a long-term reduction in crime in Surrey, over 10 years,” he said. “Last year violent crime was down two per cent in Surrey.”
The latest shootings have reignited the long-simmering dispute over Surrey’s transition to a municipal police force.
The province has ordered the city to complete its switch from the RCMP to the Surrey Police Service, a process most recently estimated to take another 2.5 years.
Opposition City Coun. Mandeep Nagra said Monday that the recent shootings have highlighted the need to speed up the transition.
“We need more police presence on our streets right away, it needs to happen today,” he said.
“People are scared to go out on the streets for their normal walks, people are scared to go out and shop during the daylight. This is happening in Surrey every day now.”
Nagra and the Safe Surrey Coalition, the party that originally initiated the police transition, claim that there are up to 50 SPS officers ready to be deployed, but being held up by the city.
“It’s meant to fearmonger — it’s a despicable statement, completely untrue,” Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke said.
Locke, who was elected on a pledge to scrap the police transition, said police deployment decisions are entirely handled by the RCMP and the provincially-appointed administrator currently acting on behalf of the Surrey Police Board, not city council.
“Maybe (Surrey Police Chief Norm) Lipinski and (Former Safe Surrey Coalition Mayor Doug) McCallum should get their numbers straight,” she added.
“There certainly has been no 50 officers waiting to be deployed, that is not facts, and quite frankly I am getting a bit tired of the previous council talking about those non-facts.”
Politics aside, Locke said the recent shootings remain a serious concern and a high priority for the Surrey RCMP.
The Surrey Police Service, meanwhile, said Monday that it had deployed an additional 11 officers, bringing its deployed force up to about 200 people in operational policing roles.
The latest deployment includes four sergeants and seven constables, and the SPS said it hoped to deploy senior officers including staff sergeants and inspectors later this year.