Cry for help from Surrey RCMP
Credit to Author: Matt Robinson| Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2019 00:28:37 +0000
The head of the Surrey RCMP is warning that his city’s draft budget will have a detrimental effect on policing, and says without increases to resources “we cannot expect crime to go down.”
Surrey’s draft budget for 2020 allows for no additional police officers, making it the second straight year without an increase in one of B.C.’s fastest-growing cities. The budget has irked residents and members of the business community who want to see more officers on the ground.
Assistant Commissioner Dwayne McDonald said Tuesday that the budget as it stands will harm the force’s services, and the health and wellness of its members.
“The City of Surrey previously denied my request for 12 additional officers for 2019 and it was made clear to me that any additional requests for police resources would not be entertained while the city is petitioning the province for a municipal police service,” McDonald said in a written statement.
McDonald said he may now be forced to pull people from proactive, community-based policing programs meant to help prevent crime and redeploy them to the front line to respond to a significant and continuing uptick in calls and files.
When asked which programs McDonald was referring to, the Surrey RCMP pointed to a webpage that listed dozens of initiatives. Among them were programs aimed at keeping young people involved in positive activities, helping parents who are concerned their kids may become involved in illegal activities, reaching out to diverse communities, and supporting victims of crime.
Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum wouldn’t comment on McDonald’s warning.
Anita Huberman, the CEO of the Surrey Board of Trade, said her group has already spoken to McCallum about concerns among the business community over the lack of new officers — and firefighters too. But the mayor was apparently unswayed by what he heard, and Huberman was planning to send on Tuesday a letter to Mike Farnworth, the public safety minister and solicitor general, asking him to get involved.
“It is that ministry that must ensure that we have adequate and efficient policing and law enforcement to service a city of our size,” Huberman said. She also planned to send a copy of the letter to Mike Morris, the Liberal safety critic.
Huberman said McCallum hasn’t responded to the board’s requests for more officers to help ensure businesses are adequately protected.
“He stays steadfast and resolute in what he believes to be the right public safety approach for this city. We are on opposite sides of this issue,” she said.
Surrey’s draft budget is slated to proceed to final approval Dec. 16. Most new spending in that budget is devoted to policing transition and capital costs for the city’s shift from the RCMP to a Surrey Police Department. Surrey plans to spend $700,000 on a transition project office and $25.2 million on costs associated with the new municipal force in 2020. Other costs associated with the transition are pegged at nearly $130 million over five years.
Surrey will spend about $162 million on police services from the RCMP in 2019, plus $24 million for civilian support costs for a total of $186 million, according to the Surrey police transition plan. The municipal force is slated to be operational by April 2021, and by 2022 the city is expecting to pay $205 million annually for policing.
Crime in the city has trended downward since 2014, and Surrey’s violent-crime severity index hit a ten-year-low in 2018, McDonald said. But this year Surrey RCMP has seen a three per cent increase in calls — about 460 more per month — and a 3.6 per cent increase in files, he said.