The total focus on Surrey in planning to create a municipal police force to replace the RCMP failed to account for the potentially serious province-wide impacts of what the council wanted to do.
One of underplayed elements of the Surrey policing fiasco is how shoddy the expert analysis of the options was.
Previous mayor Doug McCallum won office in 2018 on a promise to switch from the RCMP to a municipal force. After the city was halfway through the huge conversion, a new council headed by Mayor Brenda Locke was elected in 2022 that decided to cancel the project part way through and go back to the RCMP.
Both Surrey and the RCMP submitted lengthy reports on their plans. B.C.’s director of police services found the overall plan had “inconsistencies, lacked supporting data and evidence” and needed much more clarification. It submitted one nonetheless. The director found the plan “feasible, but only when considered in isolation of the RCMP resourcing pressures and needs across B.C.”
He said the original decision to make a municipal force was unanimous, “then they said: ‘No, we want to go back … .”
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