2 weeks Ago By Gordon Hoekstra
Article content A month away from the Surrey Police Service taking over command from the RCMP, the hiring of new officers has ramped up again for the new municipal force. The SPS hired 30 experienced officers in September and another 33 in October, from within B.C.
and across Canada. That gives the force 445 officers, nearly 60 per cent of the target of 785 officers. The number of recruits new to policing being trained at a provincial centre, the Justice Institute of B.
C., is expected to rise as well. While the SPS increases the number of its officers, the RCMP will reduce its numbers, a transition that is likely to take another two years or more.
“Our recruiting is coming along very well ...
We are very much on track to (take over command) on Nov. 29,” SPS Chief Const. Norm Lipinski Tuesday.
Lipinski added he was confident that work it’s doing with the RCMP, Ottawa, the province and the city will build a cohesive plan that ensures the transition continues through 2025 to ‘a bit of’ 2027. He said information on that plan would be made public in the next few weeks. Of the 445 SPS officers, 270 are working on the front lines, while others are overseeing operations, recruiting and training officers, and working on the logistics of the transition.
There are other officers in the training pipeline, including the latest block of 33 experienced officers who are in a six-week training session. The SPS now has 30 vehicles on the road, and is working through other transition aspects that include building up its own information technology system and a plan to transition RCMP case files. During the transition, the public will see both SPS and Mounties and vehicles in the community, said SPS spokesman Ian MacDonald.
The RCMP’s provincial branch will oversee the Surrey detachment RCMP officers during the transition and when the SPS takes over command, known officially as taking over as “police of jurisdiction.” about the transition, RCMP Assistant Commissioner John Brewer, responsible for criminal operations in B.C.
, said: “We will ensure there is certainty for our Surrey members as we shift to a provincial support unit for Surrey, with specific roles and responsibilities.” Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke and her majority city council were engaged in an 18-month battle to stop the transition undertaken by the previous council. The when Locke and her council agreed to a $250 million deal with the province to assist with the costs of the transition.
During the long-running battle, Locke and her council had refused to fund a ramped-up transition and hiring essentially halted. Locke and her council to block the transition, which the province wanted to go ahead. The province’s financial package includes $30 million a year until 2029 to assist with the transition.
It also includes as much as $20 million a year between 2029 and 2034 if Surrey Police Service costs are higher than the city would have paid to the RCMP. A key concern has been that the municipal force will increase costs. A cost analysis for the province had showed that if both forces had 734 officers, the SPS would cost $30 million more a year than the RCMP, about a 15 per cent cost increase.
RCMP wage costs have increased since then, on par with the SPS. Locke has repeatedly pointed to a difference of $75 million from the Deloitte report, but that compared an SPS force of 900 officers to an RCMP force of 734 officers, not an apples-to-apples comparison. that she wants to understand the progress to date on the transition and ensure the policing model and costs address Surrey’s needs.
The B.C. government had the city had appointed two leading experts in the policing field, Tonia Enger and Clayton Pecknold, to represent the city at a joint implementation table, alongside representatives from the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General, Public Safety Canada, the RCMP and the SPS.
The province had removed the appointed board in the midst of the long-running dispute but has said a board will be reinstated in early 2025..
