Surrey police board votes for a new force
SURREY — Surrey is a step closer to having its own police force as the city moves ahead with a plan to replace the local RCMP detachment.
At their inaugural meeting on Thursday, nine members of the new Surrey police board approved a motion to create the Surrey Police Service. It’s expected to launch the day after the city’s contract with the Mounties ends on March 31.
Board chairman and Mayor Doug McCallum, who was elected on the campaign promise to create the municipal force, said: “It is about local autonomy. It is about local accountability and it is about representing the diverse communities that we serve.”
The B.C. government approved the switch in February and appointed the board in June to oversee the new force in Surrey, which has a population of about 518,000.
The board is tasked with hiring a chief constable, setting policies, overseeing the service’s budget and assuming responsibility for complaints. McCallum said members will work to “recruit the top police leaders in the country to work with us to build an innovative, modern and proactive police service.”
But the president of the National Police Federation, which acts as the bargaining agent for more than 20,000 RCMP and reservists, said recruitment and training could pose challenges.
Brian Sauve said police recruitment across Canada has become increasingly difficult. “Everyone is chasing after the dwindling pool of applicants who want to join policing as a career,” he said.
“I think it will be a challenge to create and find 800 or so people who want to be police officers in the Lower Mainland of B.C. in a short period of time.”
Even if there are enough recruits, Sauve said, the Justice Institute of B.C. does not have the capacity to train them without an infusion of money from the province.
Finding the right candidates for chief of the new police service might also be difficult, he said.
“It’s going to need a builder’s mindset, not necessarily an experienced police chief’s mindset and it should be a fairly long process,” he said, noting that McCallum has said the chief would be hired by the fall. “Executive searches, they take months, if you’re doing it right, and you’re doing it transparently, and if you’re doing it with the input of experts in the field.”
Board member and elected chief of the Semiahmoo First Nation Harley Chappell acknowledged the pool for officers at the executive level is slim. He said the board understands the “dire need” to begin recruiting.
The board believes officers will want to come to Surrey to “be part of something new and something fresh, and to really be able to build a police force from the ground up,” he said.
McCallum said the first priority is to hire a police chief, adding the process will start next week. “We’re going to do a very thorough process on hiring,” he said, noting a consulting firm has been hired to help. “We’re going to take time to be sure that we get the right person for the job.”
McCallum said there has been strong interest in coming to Surrey among police officers throughout B.C., particularly from Metro Vancouver. The transition has caused rifts in the mayor’s own political party as three members resigned from the Safe Surrey Coalition last year, citing concerns about McCallum’s approach.
The city held public consultations last year and afterward said there was “overwhelming” support for a municipal police force.
Coun. Brenda Locke later filed a freedom of information request to obtain the full report on the consultations, which showed that hundreds of people who commented online opposed the plan.
A report by former B.C. attorney general Wally Oppal concluded the shift to a civic police force would increase the operating budget by 10.9 per cent in 2021, taking into account the loss of federal subsidies and achieving wage parity with the Mounties. That’s on top of millions of dollars in one-time capital investments to set up a police department.
However, Oppal’s report said Surrey is the only municipality in Canada with more than 300,000 residents that doesn’t have its own police force.