the Surrey Policing Circus

Posted on by Pete Cross

So by now you have heard the latest policing news consuming the Lower Mainland of B.C. The question: who is going to police the City of Surrey? After four years of transitioning to a new police service, the Surrey city council have decided that this would be a good time to go backwards. Re-trench, undo all the previous political decisions, fire the 390 officers that they already hired, and try to find more Mounties to go back to being policed by the men and women in Scarlet.

The “decision” was pushed to the NDP Government in Victoria to come up with a “decision”.

So now the “decision” was in.

British Columbia Minister Farnworth announced that they would recommend carrying on with the original transition to the newly formed Surrey Police Service; that in essence the Mounties are not in a position to properly re-take policing in Surrey or resume becoming what the government calls the “police of jurisdiction”. Also Mr. Farnworth and the NDP, in other words, the taxpayers of British Columbia, are willing to help defray the costs of the annual increase in costs, estimated at $30 million annually, for at least the next five years during the transition to the SPS.

Correspondingly, he also added that if the council under the guidance of uncomprehending Brenda Locke continues on her stated path of going back to the RCMP, or “reverse transitioning”, then there would be no monies forthcoming from the government. This would include the $72 million estimate that would need to be paid out to to get rid of the already hired SPS employees.

If the new money was not enough to convince Ms. Locke the government felt it necessary to add that if they choose to go back, then there would still be a number of conditions that they outlined that needed to be met. Those conditions on first viewing seem to place the Mounties in a very difficult position, especially the one where they are not allowed to steal from other detachments to reach the Surrey manpower goals.

It was a long awaited decision, one of the hardest decisions Minister Farnworth, the Attorney General for British Columbia says that he had ever undertaken, in trying to decide on who should patrol the streets of Surrey. He probably should have said the hardest “recommendation” he had to put forward, but maybe we shouldn’t pay attention to the semantics. One certainly should not be paying attention to either former Mayor McCallum, or the current Mayor Brenda Locke. Former Mayor McCallum just seems like an old crotchety senior citizen of South Surrey ranting over the picket fence. After the decision he was interviewed and spoke at great length how he never sees the Mounties at his grand kids soccer games. One would assume in his mind conclusively proving that the RCMP are not good members of the community.

Mayor Locke for her part accuses everyone of playing politics– except herself of course. She like McCallum seems at times unhinged, and we would also say with complete confidence, completely disconnected to the real conditions in the Surrey RCMP and in the RCMP in general. It may not be her fault because this blogger believes she has been continually misled by the information coming out of the RCMP.

It is sometimes forgotten that originally Ms. Locke was on the side of McCallum and ran with him. She then she had a falling out with the mayor, and overnight became revolutionized, and is now re-born as an ardent supporter of going back to the RCMP. One should not under estimate the fact that for Ms Locke this fight is personal. In fact she may be motivated solely by conquering McCallum–she is bitter, and the thought of McCallum winning the overall argument does not sit well, and may in fact be playing the biggest part in clouding her judgement.

In following the media, and the social media around this decision, seems to demonstrate that there a bit of fact checking needed.

There has been a lot of comment about the NDP, not wanting to offend too many voters and the nine parliamentary seats in the Surrey area, that what Farnworth and the NDP did in “recommending” was to effectively”kick the can down the street”. This is true, it was a recommendation not a decision; but that is the result of the sometimes vague language of the Police Act. In particular Section 2 which states that the Minister responsibilities include only that he “establish priorities, goals and objectives and goals for policing and law enforcement in British Columbia”. He can recommend, set out conditions, but not dictate, which is what they did.

Ms. Locke says the government has been disrespectful in that the Police Act states “categorically” that the choice of police is under the purview of the municipality”. Not quite true either. The Act says that the municipality of over 5,000 people must “provide police and law enforcement in accordance with this Act” (Section 3). Again the Act language is somewhat vague on this, but then again Ms. Locke has developed a recent habit of misleading statements.

There are large portions of the report redacted, which for the life of me on reading all that was provided does raise the question as to what possibly could be so sensitive that the public is not allowed to see it —especially in the context of this narrative. I have been told that Ms. Locke points to this redaction as a government cover-up, but the fact of the matter is that all the redactions were done or requested by the RCMP.

You will remember that all the parties; the RCMP, the Surrey City Council and the Surrey Police Service all provided reports/information for the Provincial government to consider. They had to be asked twice, because the first time they didn’t answer all the questions. In fact back in December they called the City report as having “contained inconsistencies, lacked supporting data and evidence”.

The City report now provided estimates to re-take policing in the city that they would only have to re-up 161 members (I am not convinced of that number and neither was the government) and that they were going to do this by three methods: recruiting back from the SPS; getting more officers from Depot (which would negate other detachment needs);,and by pulling members from other regions of BC (page 24). They even suggested that they could transfer members into the Surrey detachment for 6 months and if that still was not sufficient could resort to calling members in on overtime to fill shifts.

The government saw this as problematic. How could an agency that is 1525 (hard/soft vacancies) officers short in the Province begin to take further members from other locations they asked? Remember that this government just gave an additional $230 million to try and support the rural areas of the Province because of a lack of staffing. The government also quoted the 2019 Public Safety Canada report which stated: “demand for officers…outstrips the RCMP’s capacity to recruit and train” and “that under staffing is effecting the health and welfare of their members”.

They go on to say that Federal policing has been eroded to meet those contract demands and stated the stats that since 2010 show that contract officers increased by 17% while Federal officers decreased by 30%. They concluded by saying that they had significant concerns regarding sustainability of the program and regular member production levels.

What the most interesting take-away from all of this, it is that the RCMP has finally had to reveal its staffing inadequacy that has been in existence for probably 25 years. Every Mountie that has worked in the lower mainland for the last few decades has heard the term “do more with less” so much so that it became a standing joke at every annual assessment of spending priorities. Now the shortages have become acute, exacerbated by demographics, covid, a lack of recruitment, and a complete lack of foresight by the upper management of the RCMP and the governments of the day. The difference now is they have had to come clean with the staffing shortage numbers. They have had to show how they were going to cover off these shortages and when examined, in essence, they were going to resort to their time held tradition of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Now the government has called them on it.

The 20th century centralized structure of the RCMP is now making people even question the “sustainability of contract policing”. This was most recently stated by the Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act, that was completed by this same BC Provincial government and released last year. It called for the re-establishment of a Provincial force, to get rid of the Mounties all together.

People need to understand and accept that the RCMP is not a stable organization right now. This is not about individual officers this is about an organization.

The RCMP is being buffeted by the winds of needed change. The inquiry at Portapique, just the most recent to say what has been said by other inquiries and other reports that came before it. The City of Surrey is a large municipality that is growing at 1,000 to 1500 people per month. It clearly needs its own dedicated police force with local control, that can act and re-act in a timely fashion. Ms. Locke, for whatever reason, is ignoring the obvious.

As a former long-standing RCMP officer it saddens me that the organization has proven that it can not adapt to big city policing, but it is what it is. There is also the theory that Ottawa once when pressed, will admit that it is really wanting to be a Federal level only Force. This is a difficult country to be all things to all people, to be a single police entity for all forms of investigational need, a massive undertaking in any circumstance. Currently the RCMP is failing miserably on the Federal side as well, and a re-structuring from the contract Provinces would go a long way in boosting up the Federal side. Whether true or not, only time will tell.

There is a long history of RCMP ineptitude in Ottawa, most of it born out of government bloat and bureaucratic aggrandizement. This is a police service which became too enamoured with themselves, enamoured with promotion and empire building, and to survive has traded in political favours, all to the detriment of the basic organizational and contractual needs. This is an Ottawa problem not a problem of individual police officers.

It is indeed ironic, that while all this mayhem and political grand-standing is going on and circling the RCMP’s largest detachment in Canada– the acting RCMP Commissioner is in England, presenting a horse and a ceremonial sword to King Charles. They just don’t get it. Similar to Trudeau in New York to talk about women’s rights and pose with Hollywood celebrity Hugh Jackman “Wolverine”, all while Ottawa is under a massive general strike.

So my advice to Ms. Locke, swallow your political pride, you are in essence surrounded on all sides, there is no way out for the RCMP; they are trapped in a system, one that will simply not allow them to fulfill their present mandate. Now not only the Surrey taxpayers are going to pay the price for these politicians, now everyone in the Province will be paying for these shenanigans. As long as this goes on there is further indirect damage being done in terms of operational policing. Morale is at an all time low on both sides, there is continuing in-fighting between the SPS members and the RCMP, some of it quite personal, continuity in files is being damaged, and the image of Surrey and its council is being tarnished with every appearance at a podium. While they decide who has the authority to go ahead, the decision is now stuck, resting somewhere in the ether, nestled between vague pages of the Police Act. The government report now estimates, even if they decide to carry on with the Surrey Police Service, another three years will be needed. A total of seven years for a transition?

Meanwhile, Brenda and Doug are politically arm-wrestling to see who will eventually be allowed to drive the clown car.

Photo Courtesy of David Blackwell vis Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved

Sharing a Patrol Car

Posted on by Pete Cross

The planned transition from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Surrey to the new Surrey Police Service is beginning to fray a little bit. It would seem from one on the outside looking in, that there is a lot of time being spent in that muddled grey “transition” area; the area now “shared” by two separate policing groups. In practise currently, effective control of the policing in the city is still in the shaky hands of the Mounties. Official city signs proclaim that the City of Surrey is “where the future is”. The problem is that nobody knows where what lays ahead in terms of policing, a city which has more than its share of criminal problems.

The longer the residents live in this partially castrated middle ground there will be significant implications for the overall police service to that community. As of today, the RCMP are the policing agency of record, and from that viewpoint, nothing has really outwardly changed. However, as the new Surrey Police Service officers are very slowly being sprinkled amongst the various Watches, there are increasing reports of declining morale and personal friction between the two groups. Members of the two groups are now sharing a patrol car, at least in a theoretical sense, but this changeover is turning into a grinding process with no end in sight.

This shared policing mandate is by no means a normalized policing model and it is clearly unsustainable long term. To expect two separate entities to be tasked to police the same jurisdiction but play by different rules administratively and operationally seems obviously untenable. Even more worrisome is that this may continue for the next number of months or apparently even years. As time marches on, things such as investigational process and file management have a very real chance of becoming very blurry.

For the clarity of record, I have been in favour of an independent Surrey Police Service for many years. This is due mainly to the sadly crumbling RCMP no longer able to deliver what they are if fact contracted to do. There is no idealized thought held that a version of a new police force is the panacea for all that ails policing. Ottawa and its over bureaucratized structures is the albatross hanging around the neck of the RCMP; it is not the performance of individual officers in day to day policing. The structural, operational, and resourcing hurdles now facing the officers of the RCMP continue to be soul destroying and there does not appear any willingness on the part of Ottawa to change. This blog continues to maintain that a trained officer in one uniform is on an individual level, not much different than any other police officer. The colour of the uniform is irrelevant, it is the structure of how they are being asked to operate that is the key to understanding both the problems and the solutions in policing.

That said, sufficient time has now passed since the announced development of the SPS and there are questions that need to be asked and answered as to the overall expectations of this new police service.

The most blatant and obvious question is how long is this going to take? The Surrey Police Board was formed in August 2020. The first SPS officer was deployed in 2021, and now it is projected according to their own “Strategic Plan” for 2022, that in May of 2023 they will have in place 295 sworn officers. At first blush that number seems reasonable, as recruitment, hiring and vetting of new officers is in fact a very time consuming process. Plausible until one considers that the Surrey RCMP currently consists of over 800 officers. So after 2.5 years, the SPS will have only about 36% of the anticipated need of the current RCMP. A little more alarming is that currently, again, according to their own strategic plan, there is no anticipated or formative deadline for this newly formed organization. That would and should seem unacceptable to any Surrey taxpayer.

A second question is to do with the amount of monies currently being spent and what is projected. The first proposed budget for this transition was $63.7 million and it was to cover for the years 2020-2024. So far, the new group has spent $25 million in 2021 and will be spending another $79 million in 2022. There are still two years to go and clearly they are already over budget. Their claim is that the extra costs are largely the result of spending in the area of information technology. Should one assume and accept that in the planning stages they did not anticipate an IT transition in all of its cost and ramifications?

Can the slowness of the development of this new police service along with the budgetary failings be attributed to the fact that it is being overseen by the bureaucratic sounding Surrey Police Transition Trilateral Committee? The fact that this “committee” consists of three levels of government coming together to oversee and supervise this process may be your most obvious explanation as to delay and lack of deadlines.

If you go to the SPS website looking for some insight you will be disappointed. It is the flavour of what constitutes government communication in this day and age, prodigiously filled with government baffle which seems designed to thwart any kind of real examination. You will see all the usual governmental language flags of “appeasement” and “inclusion”. The all too common phrases of “local partners”, “best practises”, “community engagement”, all framed within their newly polished and enshrined motto: “Safer. Stronger. Together”. (One can only wonder what someone was paid for such a benign and lacklustre motto.)

On the website, you will see allusions to Robert Peel and his 9 rules of Policing, but in particular his 7th rule which ended with his less than profound “…the police are the public and that the public are the police”. You will also see a section where are listed the core values of this new age police department which is using the phraseology such as “honour’ and “inclusiveness”. I am sure by this time most readers could guess at all the others.

To reach the citizens of Surrey and be able to respond to their needs, the SPS points to the fact that from June to October 2021 they engaged in large scale community consultation. This included, “public opinion surveys”, “stakeholder interviews,” and the use of “focus groups.” All this has led to their grand 2022 Strategic Plan.

If you examine this “Plan” in greater depth you will find it broken down into three parts; operational readiness, organizational development, and employee development and wellness. Inside all of these three categories of planned action you will find references to the further need for more “research” and further time needed to “develop”. Under operational readiness you will see that their goal includes developing “a file transfer strategy” and the development of an “operational and administrative manuals.” Under the heading of organizational development you will see plans to “research body worn cameras” and “research best practises in community programs” such as the program for a “school resource officer”. This would seem to suggest there is still a lot of research and development to follow.

This is not to say that this transition is not an enormous and often complicated undertaking. It is. One does get the sense as well that the Committee is trying to insure that all the officers of the 2000 applications the SPS say they have now received, do not completely wipe out some of the current and local municipal forces. They have now started reviewing applications from outside the Lower Mainland, so as not to completely wipe out departments such as West Vancouver, Delta, or Port Moody. This underlines the fact that this is as much a political process as an organizational process, that Police Services sequestered in Victoria is trying to orchestrate.

The SPS does seem to be on target in terms of catering to the whim of the special interest groups and the ridiculous and often gratuitous media coverage. They list their community “engagements” as having four meetings with the 2SLGBTQ+, and 21 meetings with the Indigenous. The actual day to day policing needs such as file management, the continuity of investigations and the ongoing need for sustained expertise in investigations is not mentioned in the “Strategic Plan”.

In previous blogs I have questioned those that have been chosen to lead this new SPS. Those doubts have not been alleviated by what has transpired so far. Mr.Lepinski with little doubt, is astute at reading the political winds, bending and curtseying to the social liberalized version of what constitutes policing in this day and age. Whether this type of leadership translates into a vibrant operational police force is quite another matter.

I have been told that Jennifer Hyland in charge of the Support Services group is also overseeing the purchase of Yeti water bottles, ArcTeryx clothing, and Lululemon workout gear for those now under her command– it is not clear whether the Surrey taxpayers would feel that this is appropriate use of transitional monies. She is the one overseeing the hiring of over 800 new officers, so one can only hope the thought of a paid-for water bottle will move that process along a little more quickly.

The other unknown in this SPS transition is the pro SPS-Mayor himself and the civic elections slated for October 15th, 2022. McCallum is a bit of a swollen buffoon, he has been for many years, and some of that character will be exposed in an upcoming ridiculous criminal trial where he is charged with mischief for a false claim of a protestor running over his foot. The fact that he is the political wedge and image for this new police force is at the very least a hindrance. However, as unpopular as he is, with numerous mayoral candidates he may once again outfox the likes of Brenda Locke by splitting the votes sufficiently amongst the eight current candidates. There are over 56 candidates for council, so good luck to the Surrey voters figuring that one out.

I remain convinced that a separate municipal agency is the only viable route for policing in Surrey. But, to say that the current leadership for this new entity is capable of pulling it off, on budget, and with an operational emphasis is still a very open question. Woke leadership is not what is needed right now. They are clearly emblematic of the majority of police leaders operating in this current climate, Lepinski and Hyland are inhalers of all things political, and they have survived and flourished regurgitating the narrative which does not offend and that caters to the special interest groups. The Surrey residents are currently being fed a pablum of meaningless verbiage, and if that is all they wanted, maybe, just maybe, they should have retained the forever opaque RCMP.