Municipal debates renew push for regional policing in B.C.

With the future of policing up for debate in some parts of British Columbia, there are renewed calls for regional police forces in some of the province’s most populated areas.

The City of Surrey remains locked in a years-long and still unsettled debate over whether to keep the RCMP or complete the transition to a new municipal force. And questions about policing in Langley have now erupted, with a debate over whether the RCMP detachment that polices both the City of Langley and Township of Langley should be divided.

1:52 Langley Township votes to separate RCMP from Langley City

“It has made a simmering situation and turned it to a boil. We ask the government to take a leadership role,” BC Green Party House Leader Adam Olsen said.

Last spring, an all-party committee of the B.C. legislature recommended scrapping the province’s current policing model and introducing regional police forces for the Lower Mainland and Capital Regional District.

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The committee also called for B.C. to end its contract with the RCMP and create a provincial police force.

In the year since that report came out, little has happened to lay the foundation for change.

“If government would have to go down that road it would require discussion with local government,” B.C. Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said.

None of those discussions are currently underway.

Farnworth says any changes to the policing models would require work at multiple levels of government.

But some experts say the issue could be resolved more quickly than the province suggests.

2:09 B.C. committee recommends ditching RCMP, creating provincial force

Kash Heed, a former public safety minister and solicitor general under the BC Liberals, said when his government studied the issue in 2010, it concluded such a change could be completed in two to three years.

“We have this big, gaping wound in policing here in B.C., and we keep taking band-aid approaches to that wound, instead of just suturing that wound to begin with,” he told Global News.

“This excuse that it’s going to take another decade to do it, I don’t buy that,” he added. “That’s a political excuse, not a real excuse in my opinion.”

Advocates for regional policing say it could improve communication and reduce jurisdictional barriers, particularly on cases where crime crosses municipal boundaries.

Heed said the province already has numerous examples — such as the Metro Vancouver Transit Police, E-Comm 911 service and the PRIME BC police records management tools — that lay the groundwork for merging police forces on a regional basis.

B.C.’s NDP government says the first recommended changes to the province’s Police Act will be introduced to the legislature next fall.