Policing During a Pandemic
Like all organizations, the Surrey RCMP has had to adapt its operations due to the pandemic. In March, we created the COVID-19 Compliance & Enforcement Team (CCET) with the City of Surrey to help businesses and residents understand the public health orders and the role they play. The creation of this team also provided us with a way to respond to health order contraventions without negatively impacting our frontline police service.
Over the past seven months, the
CCET has checked thousands of businesses, faith-based organizations, and public spaces. While enforcement is an option, the CCET focuses on education and voluntary compliance with health orders. This approach has proven successful with less than 0.5% found to be non-compliant. Just ten violation tickets have been issued since fines were put in place in August.
While the pandemic caused disruption to schools and youth programming in the Spring and
Summer, we are pleased to have our School Resource Officers back in Surrey schools this fall. We have also adapted our Shattering the Image and Project Lavender presentations for virtual delivery to youth and parents.
We are mindful that the pandemic has been particularly hard on our most vulnerable citizens – both financially and emotionally. We continue to support these individuals through our Police Mental Health Outreach Team, in collaboration with our health and social service partners.
As the scope of the pandemic changes, we will adjust its operations accordingly. Our goal, as always, will be to keep Surrey businesses and citizens safe.