VOICE OPINION COLUMN
IT was but natural for Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth to announce on Wednesday that the Surrey police transitioning will continue.
In fact, as The VOICE reported last week, Premier David Eby had hinted that at the premiers’ meeting in Winnipeg when he pointed out: “We have [RCMP] officers that have to work extended shifts, that are increasingly strained and stressed and then going off on leave, making the problem worse. We don’t see a clear path from the federal government about filling those vacancies.”
He added: “The [RCMP] contract as a whole is up in the early 2030’s and we need to know which direction the federal government is going with contract policing because the current situation is NOT SUSTAINABLE for British Columbia.” (Capitalization ours for emphasis.)
The media also reported that RCMP figures given to the provinces indicated that at least 200 MORE RCMP officers were retiring or quitting the force each year compared to those graduating from the RCMP Depot.
In 2022-2023, 898 Mounties retired or quit as compared to 623 RCMP Depot graduates. The projection for 2023-2024 shows that 842 RCMP officers will leave as compared to 638 RCMP Depot graduates.
THIS shook up Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke, the RCMP bosses and the RCMP union so badly that they desperately came up with what was nothing but a bribery scheme earlier this week, offering thousands of dollars to Surrey Police Service officers to join Surrey RCMP!
They called it the “Stabilization Allowance Program” — $10,000 for those who apply to join the Mounties in the first two months, $8,000 for those applying in the third month, and $5,000 for those who decide to apply in the fourth and last month.
No wonder then that the whole world was mocking the Surrey Mayor and the Mounties who had been claiming that a large number of SPS officers had “indicated” they would switch over to the RCMP!
THE VOICE had highlighted these facts over the past more than four years:
* Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum and seven of his Safe Surrey Coalition members won the election fair and square over four years ago on the pledge that they would form a Surrey police force to replace the RCMP. In fact, all the eight new Councillors, including the lone one (Linda Annis) from Surrey First (as well as the present mayor Brenda Locke), voted to ditch the RCMP at the very first Council meeting.
* Among the tactics that the pro-RCMP forces started resorting to was the call for a referendum on the change in policing. However, legally, only the City could authorize such a referendum – not the Province or the federal government. So the RCMP’s stooges finally organized a joke of a referendum. The result? The referendum inspired and paid for by the RCMP’s National Police Federation could not even garner as many votes as McCallum won as mayor! The Surrey Police Union said it was pleased to see that at least 88% of registered voters in Surrey did not sign it. The National Police Federation paid more than $104,000 of the total of $118,264 that was used to carry out the so-called referendum, better known as the Surrey Police Vote initiative. In other words, the real people forked out just over $14,000, according to financial documents filed to Elections BC.
* Meanwhile, Surrey voters delivered a slap in the face of those who wanted to keep the RCMP in Surrey in the 2020 provincial election when they not only re-elected all six incumbent NDP MLAs – Jinny Sims (Surrey-Panorama), Rachna Singh (Surrey-Green Timbers), Jagrup Brar (Surrey-Fleetwood), Harry Bains (Surrey-Newton), Bruce Ralston (Surrey-Whalley) and Garry Begg (Surrey-Guildford) – but also booted out Marvin Hunt (Surrey-Cloverdale) and replaced him with the NDP’s Mike Starchuk in spite of the BC Liberals and RCMP supporters making the police transition the hot issue in the city in the election. That made the new BC Liberal Leader Kevin Falcon assure Punjabi journalists at a press meeting that he supported the municipal police transition.
* As The VOICE wrote on November 21: “Indeed, McCallum and his Safe Surrey Coalition would have won the municipal election but for the RCMP harassment of charging McCallum with public mischief – whereas the RCMP did nothing to charge their supporters with criminal harassment as they heaped abuse on McCallum, his SSC councillors and supporters day and night.” The judge ruled in McCallum’s favour. Interestingly, a retired RCMP sergeant wrote this before the verdict: “I also find it amazing that the RCMP thought it would be prudent, or ethical, to investigate this matter, knowing that the alleged victim of public mischief was in fact part of a group that was funded by the RCMP union.” He added: “Knowing what we know about the affect of bias and prejudice on the investigative process, would it have been wise to have another police agency investigate this?” In any case, despite all this, Locke won last year by FEWER THAN 1,000 VOTES!
MEANWHILE, the Surrey Police Service has blossomed into a force that is loved and respected by Surrey-ites.
And, as the Surrey Police Union pointed out in an open letter last May:
* SPS already has 46% of the police officers currently required to police Surrey. Deployed SPS officers currently comprise over 25% of the Surrey RCMP’s total
* SPS’s modern policing model is already showing early signs of success:
– Increased transparency on policing for Surrey residents including the posting of monthly financials, staffing levels, public board meetings, and collective agreements.
– Enhanced de-escalation training and low use of force complaints.
– Unprecedented application numbers in a time when police recruiting has been challenging across North America.
– Indigenous Engagement Strategy and consultation is well underway.
* 98% officer retention rate.
Also, back in March, The VOICE published a column by SPS Chief Constable Norm Lipinski titled “Modern policing for a modern city,” in which he pointed out that currently, 50 per cent of SPS officers identify as a visible minority, including 22 per cent who identify as South Asian.
Lipinski also noted that there are 52 Punjabi-speaking officers and 31 who speak Hindi.
This newspaper noted at the time: “It would be sheer lunacy for the NDP government to disband such a novel police force that is already being admired across North America as a role model in diversity.”
We also pointed out: “The NDP would be shamelessly hypocritical if it ignored the above-mentioned facts as well as the reality that 67.1 per cent of people in Surrey identified as a person of colour in 2021, according to Statistics Canada.
“(In comparison, only 54.5 per cent of people in Vancouver identified as a person of colour in 2021.)
“In fact, getting rid of the SPS at this crucial stage would harm the NDP for sure — and what is worse, it would definitely adversely affect the law and order situation in a city that is the ONLY large city in Canada that does NOT have its own police force.”
Last week, The VOICE also pointed out THREE facts that would remain if the RCMP stayed in Surrey:
1. The chief of police will still be appointed from Ottawa — not from Surrey. (Of course, the RCMP can always argue that the mayor has to agree to the appointment. But does the mayor really have a choice?)
2. There will be no board of police in Surrey to supervise the RCMP. Ottawa will still dictate matters.
3. All complaints against the RCMP will still go to Ottawa.
This would have been nothing but an insult to the residents of Surrey.
Surrey was the only large city in Canada NOT to have its own police force — now it will!
ON June 30, The VOICE reported that The Globe and Mail’s Francis Bula in an article titled “Surrey mayor declined meetings with Surrey Police while reinstating RCMP,” exposed the conspiracy between Mayor Brenda Locke and the RCMP to sabotage the Surrey Police Service and hoodwink the BC Government.
In spite of knowing that Surrey Connect Councillor Rob Stutt was in a clear conflict of interest because his son was a Surrey RCMP constable, Locke and her party councillors with the full knowledge of the RCMP conspired to keep the matter about Stutt’s son a secret as the Surrey Council voted to keep the RCMP as the City’s police force and stop the municipal policing transition.
As a journalist put it: “Had Stutt not voted on Nov. 14, the Dec. 9 vote would not have come before council, nor would the June 15 in-camera vote have happened, as the Nov. 14 vote would have failed on a 4-4 tie.”
The RCMP did their best to try and transfer Stutt’s son out of Surrey as fast as they could. How many officers have gotten transfers out of Surrey on their requests?
Thanks to a freedom-of-information request for Locke’s calendar from October 16 to May 10, Bula found that the mayor had her first meeting with Surrey’s main RCMP detachment on October 27, 2022. That was just 12 days after she was elected and before she was sworn in on November 7.
“On Nov. 4, there was an in-person meeting with the head of the RCMP in B.C., Dwayne McDonald, and Surrey’s chief RCMP officer, Brian Edwards, then a regular series of in-person or phone meetings, mostly with Assistant Commissioner Edwards,” Bula reported.
On December 2, McDonald and Edwards as well as city manager Vince Lalonde and Stutt had a meeting with Locke.
Locke met with then-RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki in Ottawa on December 6.
These facts clearly show the RCMP’s complicity in this deception.
THE facts speak for themselves:
THE CHOICE WAS CLEAR: SURREY POLICE SERVICE!
