Surrey Police officers don’t want to join RCMP: union

Surrey’s policing controversy continues, as the city’s new mayor pushes on with her intention to halt the transition from the RCMP to a municipal force.

The Surrey Police Union (SPU) says its members have overwhelmingly voted against joining the RCMP, as Mayor Brenda Locke suggested was going to be possible.

The union says 94 per cent of its members have signed a pledge declaring “that if the Surrey Police Service (SPS) ceases to exist, I have no intention to apply to nor join any RCMP detachment as my next career move.”

Locke started looking at disbanding the much-debated municipal force right after she was elected. She told CityNews on Oct. 16 that she had already had conversations with staff on how to move forward with pausing the transition.

In a statement Thursday, the Surrey Police Union takes aim at comments Locke made Wednesday in an interview with the Vancouver Sun, when she said she hopes many of the SPS officers would work for the RCMP.

On Thursday, Locke told CityNews, “The Surrey RCMP have a plan moving forward to hire officers, certainly having officers that are trained and know Surrey would be a great advantage, and so we’re really hopeful that some of the Surrey Police Union members will come over — and I’m confident some of them will.”

But SPU President Rick Stewart says Locke’s comments demonstrate what the union describes as a “disconnect that continues to exist” between the city’s politics and officers of the SPS.

“Our officers have voluntarily signed this declaration because of a number of specific reasons related to the RCMP, and as such, Mayor Locke’s hiring plan shows no regard for the will of our members,” he said.

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Stewart goes on to claim that the mayor’s plan suggests the possibility that SPS members who join the RCMP could be placed in jurisdictions that aren’t Surrey — something he says goes against many officers’ motivation to have joined the SPS in the first place.

“The attraction of working for a Surrey-based municipal police force remains as one of the main factors behind our successful recruitment thus far,” he said.

While the union is taking issue with Locke’s plans and comments, the SPU says it’s still willing to work with the city.

“If Mayor Locke truly wants to take a people-centric approach to policing, we remain open to collaboration, transparency and accountability in support of the best interests of Surrey residents,” Stewart added.

A day after the election, the Surrey Police Board told CityNews it had yet to hear from Locke, who was then mayor-elect.

The board said it was continuing with its rollout, adding over 350 staff had been hired.

Locke told CityNews on Thursday that she is “disappointed” with the union.

“First of all, I’m disappointed in the tactics of the Surrey Police Union. But the public has spoken, and we’re not going to be dictated to by a start-up police union on how we’re going to move forward,” she said.

“The plan is very clear. We are going to re-establish the RCMP as a place of jurisdiction in the city, and that’s what we’re doing moving forward,” she added.

Meanwhile, the Surrey Police Service previously told CityNews that in addition to the hundreds of hires, millions of dollars had already been spent on the police transition.

“We welcome fulsome discussions with mayor and council, however any decision to change course on Surrey’s policing model would require the approval of the Province of B.C., who approved Surrey’s change to a municipal police service in 2019,” SPS said in a statement on Oct. 28.

The B.C. government approved Surrey’s police transition request in February 2020. That came after the city moved to terminate its agreement with the RCMP to police Surrey.

-With files from Robyn Crawford, Greg Bowman, Charlie Carey, and Emily Marsten