Four Surrey city councillors who originally voted in favour of moving from the RCMP to a municipal police force are voicing their frustration at the transition process.
Earlier this week, Mayor Doug McCallum appointed himself and his four Safe Surrey Coalition colleagues on council to sit on his new police transition advisory committee.
WATCH: Surrey’s Police Transition Plan
Councillors Linda Annis, Jack Hundial, Brenda Locke, and Steven Pettigrew were left out of the new committee.
On Thursday, the four councillors issued a statement saying they “did not expect the Police Transition Plan to be developed behind closed doors and without our advice or input.”
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They add that the plan doesn’t address public safety concerns and “actually calls for fewer police officers in Surrey.”
The councillors said the plan also offers “no clear indication of the capital cost of this transition” and their research suggests the increase in operating costs of a mun
icipal force “will be much higher than the suggested 10 per cent.”
Additionally, the councillors said that meeting the timeline for the transition set by McCallum, and the ability to recruit 805 police officers for the new force, will be “extremely difficult, if not impossible.”
Three of the councillors — Hundial, Locke and Pettigrew — left McCallum’s Safe Surrey Coalition in recent months.
Annis, who was not a member of McCallum’s coalition, said in April that she had been shut out of the transition process.
WATCH: (Aired July 23) Surrey Mayor under fire again
In a statement to Global News, McCallum said he and the remaining Safe Surrey Coalition councillors are committed to seeing their campaign promise through.
The mayor also shot back at Hundial, Locke and Pettigrew for going back on that same promise.
“With the exception of Linda Annis, the Councillors who are now voicing their opposition were more than happy to promise to the voters that they would deliver on a city police department, if elected,” McCallum said.
“It is disingenuous at best and, at worst, this is another cynical example of hollow promises made by those seeking office and doing an about-face once voted in.”
— With files from Janet Brown and Sean Boynton
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