Surrey Police Board fires back at Mayor Brenda Locke’s public criticism

In the latest chapter of Surrey’s policing saga, the Surrey Police Board is firing back at Mayor Brenda Locke following her public criticism.

Locke made comments Tuesday expressing a lack of confidence in both the board and Surrey Police Service (SPS) Chief Const. Norm Lipinski, and Melissa Granum, the board’s executive director, says these comments were unwarranted and raise significant concerns.

“The board has worked exceptionally hard in achieving the mandates given to it by the provincial government,” Granum said. “We’re exceptionally proud of the work of our Chief Constable, but Locke says the board has continually put up walls to block the city out.”

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Granum says the board wants to fix this perceived lack of communication because it needs to work collaboratively with the city, which is necessary in order to move forward on the Surrey police transition.

“When city council indicated its desire to return to the contracted policing services of the RCMP, in the fall of 2022, the transition was essentially paused until the summer of 2023 when the provincial public safety minister made a final, binding decision under Section 2 of the Police Act to continue the transition to SPS,” Granum said in a news release.

“Because of this pause, existing agreements and plans expired and, to date, those multi-party plans have neither been renewed nor replaced with new plans. (Surrey Police) and the board require collaboration from the city of Surrey, the RCMP, and senior levels of the provincial and federal governments in order to renegotiate new plans to move the transition through to completion.”

In a statement to CityNews, Locke said it is “ironic” that greater local accountability had been touted as one of the big selling points of having a municipal police department.

“From what I’ve seen so far, all this talk about local accountability has been nothing more than lip service,” Locke said. “There is no question that there is less local accountability now than in the entire time that Surrey has been policed by the RCMP.”