A final decision on the future of policing in Surrey is expected as early as this week, but that hasn’t stopped the political debate, with new allegations flying Monday.
A pair of city councillors with the Safe Surrey Coalition have accused Mayor Brenda Locke and the Surrey RCMP of “blocking” the deployment of dozens of Surrey Police Service (SPS) officers.
The mayor, however, is accusing councillors Doug Elford and Mandeep Nagra of “political mischief” and undermining the provincial government as it reviews the city’s policing plan.
“The fact is we had 33 deployable officers (we could have) had on the street, and they were denied for political purposes,” Coun. Doug Elford told Global News Monday.
“I think the mayor is putting politics before the people of Surrey, and it is irresponsible as the CEO of the second largest city in B.C. to be acting like this.”
Locke was elected in October on a promise to scrap the city’s transition from the RCMP to a municipal police force. B.C. Public Safety minister and solicitor general Mike Farnworth, however, must sign off on the plan, with a final decision promised before May.
Police staffing in Surrey is governed by a trilateral agreement between the city and the provincial and federal governments.
Surrey Police Service spokesperson Ian MacDonald said under that agreement the SPS was meant to deploy new batches of officers, usually more than 30, every two months but that just 14 fresh recruits were deployed in March.
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“As a result of the reduction in what should have been the deployment in March and no subsequent deployments, we have 33 officers of various ranks who are ready to go as of today, they’ve done all the SPS training, they have nine-plus years experience on average … they’re ready to go,” MacDonald said.
“From a public safety standpoint, does it make sense to have 33 fully trained, experienced officers not deployed when that’s what they came here for, that’s what they were hired for and that’s a job they could do effective immediately.”
Locke said both her council and Farnworth have been clear with the Surrey Police Board that it should stop hiring until a final policing decision is complete.
“I’m unclear if Councillor Elford and actually Councillor Nagra are ignorant of the process or they’re deliberately trying to undermine the solicitor general. Either way the information they’ve provided isn’t accurate, it’s not factual, and I think it was deliberately intended to be volatile,” she said.
“Yet they didn’t. So if they have hired beyond what is the plan, the plan that they agreed to, that’s on them. But they knew full well what the deployment plan was.”
Assistant Commissioner Brian Edwards, officer in charge of the Surrey RCMP, said the city is currently operating at its funded complement of 734 officers. That figure is a combined sum of both RCMP and deployed Surrey Police Service officers.
He said the deployment plan covered by the trilateral agreement saw “some changes” after Locke’s election, and that it was “essentially put on pause” given the city’s plan to keep the RCMP.
He said despite that, the SPS continued to hire new officers and seek their deployment through to May, when the trilateral agreement was set to conclude.
“The trilateral committee was well aware that the continued deployment to the very end of the plan was incompatible with the period that Surrey sought to retain the RCMP,” he said.
“The agreed upon number of 734 members was always in place prior to the mayor being the mayor, so we adhered to 734. It’s not up to me to continue to modify numbers, those were set, and the RCMP is abiding by those agreements.”
The future of Surrey’s police transition has been fraught with political dispute since its inception under former mayor Doug McCallum.
Most recently, Locke has faced calls to resign over claims she made that a council of Metro Vancouver mayors called on the province to support the RCMP’s retention. Those claims have been disputed by the mayors and Minister Farnworth.
The city has already spent more than $100 million on the police transition so far, and the Surrey Police Service has hired about 400 officers and staff.
However, Locke maintains that despite leaving the city with a $116-million shortfall, keeping the RCMP and unwinding the SPS will still be cheaper than proceeding with the transition.