Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke announced Friday morning that council has voted to retain the RCMP in Surrey and not continue with the transition to the Surrey Police Service.
She said RCMP officers have continued to put their lives on the line to keep the community safe and they have done exceptional work.
They are welcome to continue policing in Surrey, she added.
“The RCMP has effectively policed this city since 1950,” said Locke. “Their commitment and work to ensure public safety has never ever been an issue, not four years ago and not now. Surrey council and I also have complete confidence in the RCMP and SPS members currently policing our city.”
Locke called it a “return to normalcy,” but said the cooperative policing model will have to continue for some time.
“As council, we had a duty to examine both sides,” she said. “The impacts of continuing with the transition are incredibly significant and had to be considered. Our report did exactly that and it helped all of us inform our resolve.”
The province has not yet approved the plan voted on and whether it meets the conditions imposed by the province
Speaking Friday afternoon, Solicitor General and Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said he still needs to see the report from the City of Surrey before the final decision can really be made.
If the plan is not approved by the province, Farnworth said his responsibility is to provide safe and effective policing in Surrey and across British Columbia.
He said the report from the province that was sent to Surrey’s mayor and council weeks ago laid out the requirements the city must meet if it wants to retain the RCMP.
“The city wants this resolved, I want this resolved,” Farnworth said.
He said once he and his staff have seen the report, they will have more to say.
In a statement, SPS Chief Norm Lipinski said the service is “extremely disappointed” by the decision ” despite the fact that three years’ worth of financial and human investments have gone into building a local, independent police service for Surrey.”
“It is concerning that Council has made this decision, despite the Province of BC’s clear and evidence-based recommendation that the City of Surrey continue its transition to SPS in order to ensure public safety for Surrey and across B.C.,” Lipinski said in the statement.
“I remain unwavering in my belief that SPS is the right decision for Surrey for today and for its bright future. A large modern city needs a modern police agency that can provide officers dedicated to the community and leading-edge practices.”
Lininski added that while they wait for Farnworth’s final decision, SPS officers and staff will continue to serve the residents of Surrey as they have done for the past 18 months.
The saga of Surrey’s beleaguered police transition has been going on for months after Locke, who holds a majority on council and was elected on a promise to scrap the Surrey Police Service (SPS), said she intended to return to the RCMP as the city’s police force.
Despite recent efforts to halt it, the transition to the SPS had been underway for months before Locke’s majority was elected, with more than 400 officers and support staff on the payroll.
The SPS’s plan to eventually hire 734 officers is estimated to cost about $30 million more annually than Surrey’s contract with the RCMP, but severance costs for SPS officers if the force was disbanded would now cost about $72 million.
The RCMP currently has about 1,500 job vacancies throughout B.C.
Locke, who was elected to council in 2018 as a part of former mayor Doug McCallum’s Safe Surrey Coalition, quit the party in 2019 claiming dysfunction on council and conflict over McCallum’s plan to drop the Surrey RCMP for a municipal police force.
One of her key election promises in 2022 was to scrap that transition.