After more than six months of waiting, the B.C. government is expected to inform the city of Surrey on Friday what they must do about the future of policing in the city.
Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth is scheduled to announce the decision at 9:30 a.m. The announcement will be carried live on BC1, here on the Global BC website and on the Global BC Facebook page.
Farnworth is expected to lay out conditions for the city to meet in order to proceed with its policing future.
“This is one of the most difficult decisions the government has had to make. It is a very complicated issue and there has a significant amount of work that has gone in to it,” Farnworth said.
“The key issue is public safety not just for Surrey, but the entire province.”
Surrey mayor Brenda Locke was elected in October after promising to keep the RCMP in Surrey. The current council has voted to keep the Mounties as the police force in the province’s second-largest city.
Previous mayor Doug McCallum started the city’s move towards the municipal Surrey Police Service (SPS). There are currently both RCMP and SPS officers working in the city.
Police staffing in Surrey is governed by a trilateral agreement between the city and the provincial and federal governments.
Surrey Police Service spokesperson Ian MacDonald said under that agreement the SPS was meant to deploy new batches of officers, usually more than 30, every two months but that just 14 fresh recruits were deployed in March.
“We know the expectations of people in Surrey are that when they pick up the phone and dial 911 that a police officer shows up and assists them with the crisis that they’re facing,” Premier David Eby said on Thursday.
“And that in fact is the provincial government’s responsibility here.”
Farnworth has specifically been looking at the policing proposals from the Surrey Police Service and the RCMP to ensure that public safety is protected whichever force the city keeps.
The determination will largely be based on staffing levels and the ability of police to have boots of the ground.
“It is definitely a challenge to have the city make multiple decisions and go back and forth on this, but our commitment to the city council, to the mayor, is to work with them to make sure that they have the information that they need about the transition,” Eby said.
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