Despite the results of a city council vote to keep the RCMP as Surrey’s sole police service, the head of the city’s fledgling municipal force says he plans to continue hiring.
Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke cannot order the Surrey Police Service (SPS) to cease its activities or operations, explained Chief Const. Norm Lipinski, as the SPS reports to the Surrey Police Board, which reports to the provincial government.
“The police board does not report directly to mayor and council, so the mayor doesn’t have the authority to direct the police department to do any particular thing,” he told Global News.
“We also have to keep in mind there was a human resource plan that was approved by three levels of government.”
On Monday night, Surrey councillors voted 5-4 in favour of keeping the Mounties, asking the SPS to freeze its spending. Scrapping her predecessor’s controversial transition to a new municipal force was a hallmark promise of Locke and her Surrey Connect campaign in October’s election.
City staff have now been asked to prepare a plan to re-establish the RCMP as the only force in the city that addresses staffing concerns, planning for an increase in Surrey RCMP members, and the repurposing or disposal of SPS equipment. It will come before council on Nov. 28, and if endorsed, be passed onto B.C. Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth.
“We are disappointed that we did not have an opportunity to speak with council before they made that decision and we view that council motion as the next step in this process,” Melissa Granum, director of the Surrey Police Board, told CKNW’s Jill Bennett show.
“Ultimately it’s important to remember that this decision does still remain with the minister of public safety.”
Under the B.C. Police Act, the minister must ensure that an “adequate and effective level of policing and law enforcement” is maintained across the province and has authority over the police boards that govern municipal forces. In a Tuesday interview, Mike Farnworth confirmed Surrey “doesn’t have the authority to freeze spending” on the SPS.
“There is a plan and that is in place and that plan continues until there is a new plan,” the solicitor general and public safety minister told Global News.
The provincial government will not be covering any costs associated with transition back to the RCMP, Farnworth added.
During the election campaign, Locke said her team crunched the numbers on how much it would cost to keep the SPS as the sole police of jurisdiction, but a staff report will crunch those numbers again for the public.
“I think it’s always important that the citizens of Surrey hear directly from our own finance people here at city hall and so they’ll have to review them as well,” Locke told CKNW’s Mornings with Simi.
“Many of these things we should have done at the very beginning. This is almost going back and saying, we’re going to rebuild those feasibility studies, the cost-benefit, the impact studies.”
According to the SPS and Surrey Police Board, by the end of December, the “unrecoverable sunk costs” related to the transition are expected to reach $107 million. Terminating the transition by January next year will result in a project investment loss of another $81.5 million, reads a financial backgrounder authored by both.
“If reversing the transition now, it would take the City of Surrey over a decade of annual contract savings realized from the 10 per cent federal subsidy to recover the loss of investment into building SPS to become the police of jurisdiction,” the document states.
Locke said she didn’t know how much it will cost to revert back to the RCMP, and has “only been told by staff it is much much less expensive to stay with the RCMP than to move forward.”
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In a letter earlier this week, Coun. Linda Annis urged Farnworth to call on the city to hold a referendum that will allow residents to decide whether Surrey should be stay the course or not.
Granum of the police board said “time is of the essence” when it comes to decision-making, as RCMP and SPS members — officers and civilians — have been dealing with the back-and-forth for quite some time. The board also needs to prepare a budget for council approval in 2023, she added.
“In order for the board to table that budget and for council to make any sort of decision, there has to be an understanding of which direction the province will go with its decision.”
Granum said the costs of a reversal grow monthly because with every employee the SPS brings on, it comes with additional severance liability.
Meanwhile, some SPS officers told Global News the uncertainty has been stressful.
Ryan Buhrig, spokesperson for the Surrey Police Union, described the process as “impactful.”
“I left an established policing career to come to SPS to build something bigger and this instability has caused issues for me and my family,” the former Port Moody Police Department officer said.
“I’m really feeling right now for some of our other members, my colleagues, who have moved across the country to help build SPS.”
Const. Brendan Charna, a union director, said the council’s Monday night vote was “not the easiest to take thing to take in.”
“I’ve grown up in Surrey so this is home for me. This is where I’ve always wanted to be,” he explained. “I’ve had the opportunity to work here before with the RCMP and then ultimately left because I wanted to root myself in the Lower Mainland.”
According to the Surrey Police Union, the majority of its members have signed a pledge that if the force is disbanded, they will not join the Surrey RCMP.
Locke said Tuesday she knows of some SPS officers for whom that is not the case and the municipality is committed to funding additional officers for the Mounties in its next budget.
“I think what other cities can learn from the Surrey experience, is that we have far less control and input with a local government police department,” Locke said. “We also have more control and more transparency on the numbers involved in the contract we have the RCMP.”
Lipinski said he would like to appear before mayor and council to share “what we’re capable of doing,” and the “local accountability” and “local oversight” his force brings to the table. He said he worries up to 350 people could lose their jobs in a transition back to the RCMP, he added.
By the end of the month, Lipinski said the SPS is set to have about 190 officers on the frontline.
In addition to the city, both the SPS and RCMP are expected to present reports to the province before any decision is made.
With files from Catherine Urquhart
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