Publication date: Nov 15, 2022 • 5 hours ago • 4 min read 5 Comments Surrey Police Sgt. John Jasmins and Const. Gary Siddoo. Photo Francis Georgian /PNG

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BC Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth said Tuesday the City of Surrey does not have the authority to order a spending freeze on the Surrey Police Service before a decision is made to halt the transition from the RCMP.

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Farnworth also said the city is committed to all costs, including layoffs, if the transition to municipal police is stopped. Surrey Police Service (SPS) has recruited 315 officers, of which 154 are already working on the streets under the RCMP’s jurisdiction. A hiring and spending freeze was among the decisions Surrey council made Monday night as it took the first step in dismantling the municipal force, winning approval for a proposal to keep the RCMP as a police jurisdiction. On Tuesday, city officials said a letter would be sent on behalf of the city council to the Surrey Police Board to halt all new hiring and spending pending further direction from the council.

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BC Solicitor General Mike Farnworth. Photo by Mike Bell /Mike Bell/PNG “They have no authority to freeze spending,” Farnworth said in response to questions from reporters in Victoria. “There is a (transitional) plan that is already in place. And this plan continues until there is a new plan.” Farnworth said to expect a plan from Surrey by the end of the month. Farnworth reiterated that the city needs to fully explain how they propose to end the move to municipal police, the costs and how the 300-plus officers who signed on in good faith to the SPS will be treated. He said the RCMP should also provide a plan for how it will re-enforce Surrey. “What is important, and my role as solicitor-general, is to ensure that there is safe and effective policing, not just in Surrey, but across the province. That’s why the plan to do this is extremely important,” Farnworth said.

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Policing in Surrey has been a divisive issue since 2018, when former mayor Doug McCallum took office promising to create a municipal police force to replace the RCMP. In turn, new mayor Brenda Locke campaigned against McCallum in 2022 with a promise to keep the RCMP. “Tonight’s vote not only reaffirms my promise to restore Surrey RCMP as a police jurisdiction, but will finally reveal the cost of the transition, which will be made available to the public,” Locke said after Monday’s vote. Locke and her Surrey Connect party argued that switching to a municipal police force would be far more expensive than sticking with the RCMP. Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke at City Hall. Photo by Jason Payne /PNG While a 2019 transition plan estimated that a municipal police force would be about 10 percent more expensive, Locke’s claims that a municipal force would cost up to 70 percent more have not been substantiated.

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Under a manpower transition plan agreed to by Ottawa, BC and the City of Surrey, which runs until May 2023, RCMP officers are set to retire as officers are deployed to the Surrey Police Service. So the municipality does not pay for two police forces. To date, more than $100 million has been spent on building the Surrey Police Service. In addition to the 154 officers already on the job, another 35 are expected to be deployed at the end of this month and another 20 in January. Under McCallum, the 2019 transition plan saw Surrey as the largest city in Canada without its own municipal power, bringing oversight to the local level instead of Ottawa and making it more responsive to changing conditions and demands and more representative of the community.

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On Monday, the Surrey Police Service said closing the new municipal force would cost the city $188 million, including redundancies. The SPS was expected to cost $18.3 million a year more than the RCMP to operate — far less than the $130 million a year Locke and her party claimed on the campaign trail — and would be fully operational by next July. The Surrey Police Service claims the RCMP in Surrey is inadequate. On Tuesday, Melissa Granum, executive director of the Surrey Police Board, said they would consult with the province and city on next steps, noting that the province has final authority under the Police Act. Granum noted that questions like whether officers already hired for the municipal force, but not yet deployed, will still be put on duty under a hiring freeze.

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The manpower transition plan notes that the city was trying to meet a goal of having 743 police officers on the job between the two forces. “We need the cops,” Granum said. — With files by Katie DeRosa [email protected] twitter.com/gordon_hoekstra [email protected]

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