Surrey Police Service continues to hire as new mayor looks to disband policing changeover

Despite Surrey’s Mayor-elect Brenda Locke vowing to keep the RCMP in the city, the Surrey Police Service (SPS) says hundreds of officers have already been hired.

Locke has been vocal about pausing the transition from the RCMP to a municipal force — something that the service says is already well underway.

Ian Macdonald, a spokesperson for the SPS, says the organization has hired over 300 officers, with officers deployed every two months.

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“First and foremost in their mind, is making sure that what they signed up for, which is to do police work, is what they’re going to be engaged in,” he said.

He adds another 35 officers will be starting in November, as the officers are currently finishing up their training, and will join the hundreds of other hires next month.

The new officers, “will be joining 154 of their colleagues, and responding to 911 calls, working 12-hour patrol shifts, and protecting the citizens of Surrey,” Macdonald explained.

Although Locke has been pushing against the transition, Macdonald explains it is already well underway, adding millions of dollars have been invested.

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“The building of SPS is already well-underway with millions of dollars invested, union agreements in place, 350 staff employed by the Surrey Police Board, and over 150 SPS officers providing operational police service to Surrey. 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.

Macdonald says despite the turbulence, the new hires are needed to bring up the policing level in Surrey.

A day after winning the mayoral race on Oct. 15, Locke told CityNews that she was already having conversations with city staff on how to move forward with pausing the municipal force.

“We have to make those plans quickly,” she said. “I’ve already had two meetings this morning about that very issue and we will continue down that path.”

In February 2020, the B.C. government approved Surrey’s request to roll out a municipal police force after the city moved to terminate its agreement with the RCMP to police the city.