Surrey’s transition to own police department under scrutiny at panel discussion
Posted January 29, 2019 6:10 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
SURREY (NEWS 1130) – It is one of the hottest topics of the day in Surrey: the city’s transition to away from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and towards its own department.
How to make that move as smoothly and efficiently as possible is subject of the day at a panel discussion Tuesday.
“One of the things I’m interested in talking about is the transparency of the process,” said Mike Larsen, who co-chairs the criminology department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
Larsen is also one of four panelists at the forum being hosted by the Surrey Board of Trade.
“I think the move has merits. But I think that myself and my co-panelists share come concerns about how planning has gone on, how the process is going to unfold, some of the timelines. A mix of things. I think [it is] perhaps the right move, but not done as transparently or effectively as it could be.”
RELATED: Vancouver mayor willing to help Surrey as it works to replace RCMP
On-time and on-budget is the message being preached by Surrey mayor Doug McCallum. But Larsen says the two-year timeline caught him off-guard.
“That was certainly my initial position on this. I was surprised — I think, as many people were — by the statement that this would be happening immediately and that there would be a new police department in place within two years. It seemed extraordinarily ambitious, especially minus any overall plan or overall costing.”
He says money may be top of mind for many, but people forget there are other sticking points.
“Whether it would be more a matter of re-branding existing police officers, bringing them over to a new department, how changes in command and leadership and reporting, and all of these things — how these would factor in to what policing actually looks like in Surrey. Because to me, that’s the big issue. How do we go beyond the issue of re-branding or re-packaging and start talking about what kind of a difference will this actually be?”
RELATED: If Surrey gets its own police force, other departments could lose officers to that city
However, he says he is withholding judgement until the city reveals more details.
“Perhaps the city council and the mayor are privy to plans and procedures on this that we’re not aware of. If they have a fantastic timeline, I’d love to see it,” Larsen said.
The panel discussion runs between 7:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Civic Hotel Autograph Collections on Central Avenue in Surrey.
– With files from Kurtis Doering
