Surrey Mounties need more support: Councillor
Posted January 8, 2014 11:33 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Getting rid of the RCMP and bringing in a municipal police force still isn’t an option for Surrey according to one city councillor. That’s despite Surrey Councillor Barinder Rasode saying it has fallen behind in terms of the number of officers.
She insists the city is well served by the RCMP and they are now focusing on how that service is provided, “and I think that we also need to provide our RCMP force with better support around the social services that are available to vulnerable communities because they end up dealing with a lot of those issues.”
Rasode says roughly 12 new officers are hired each year in Surrey, but to keep up with the growth, that number needs to be around 17.
She feels 45 officers are needed immediately in order to catch up.
Rasode says people living in Surrey won’t be asked to dish out more money, instead the city will look to make changes in allocating the funds already coming in.
“We need to look at our spending within the money we already have and then some creative strategies. We’ve looked at things like our secondary suite fee that we are now charging residents. I don’t know maybe, council will consider that part of that money then goes into hiring more officers.”
