THE transition to the Surrey Police Department took a significant step forward on Monday as the Provincial Municipal Policing Transition Study Committee forwarded its report on the Surrey Police transition to the Committee Chair, Wally Oppal.
“I am very pleased that the members of the committee achieved consensus on the report. They have done a superb job,” said Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum. “I very much appreciate the cooperation of the RCMP and other stakeholders in completing a very comprehensive report. All next steps on the transition will be the responsibility of the Surrey Police Board.”
The City said it looks forward to working with the Province, the federal government and the leadership of the RCMP to ensure a smooth and orderly transition to the Surrey Police Department.
Whether a few thousand Surrey residents & taxpayers (out of a city population of over 560,000!) indicated in a May/ June-2019 city questionnaire that they are “against” city council members’ plans to replace the Surrey RCMP with a Municipal police force is irrelevant to the real issues:
1) Surrey’s decades-old problem of almost daily guns & illegal drugs crimes;
2) The RCMP’s “big city” model of policing has failed Surrey- & the entire South of Fraser sub-region- miserably during the previous 2-decades;
3) Strategy(s) other than just continuing with the disastrous status quo urgently need to be tried… namely, replace the failed RCMP with a Surrey municipal police force;
4) Outrageous BC & federal govts’ lack of leadership & neglect of Surrey & its guns & illegal drugs crimes problems- during the last 20 years
While it is true that there are a small number of unethical, politically-motivated persons that (since the Oct-2018 civic elections) have been mindlessly- & dangerously- advocating for the failed RCMP model of policing to remain, unchanged- these persons should be being asked: How- other than replacing the Surrey RCMP with a municipal police force- do they say that the city’s decades-old egregious guns & illegal drugs scourge should be remedied?
A “Surrey police force” is a legitimate, long overdue strategy for remedying these problems- & their consequential hugely damaging effects on the city’s economic development & community building…
Additionally, BC’s main stream news media should be regularly reporting on the other main cause of Surrey’s (and the SOF’s) decades-old guns and illegal drugs crimes problems: outrageous lack of leadership by the BC and federal govts, and their unconscionable neglect of Surrey and its SOF neighbours during the last 20 years.
Instead of moronically advocating retention of the Surrey RCMP, interest groups should be demanding that the BC and federal govts end their decades of neglect of the SOF and its community-destroying problems, and immediately commit to collaboratively providing whatever (temporary) funding and logistical assistance is required to facilitate the establishment and operations of a Surrey municipal police force for at least the next 5-years.