Surrey Police Union: Vast majority of our officers won't work for Surrey RCMP
Nearly 300 frontline officers and other personnel are currently working for the Surrey Police Service, all of whom took the job with the new municipal force believing the city was transitioning away from the RCMP.
New mayor Brenda Locke campaigned on a promise to stop that transition, and it’s one she intends to keep. But she’s hoping most of those newly hired SPS employees will be willing to work for the Surrey RCMP.
“The Surrey RCMP have a plan moving forward to hire officers, and certainly having officers that are trained and know Surrey would be a great advantage,” said Locke.
But Const. Ryan Buhrig with the Surrey Police Service union said if the mayor expects most SPS members to simply change their uniform to RCMP, she’s in for a rude awakening.
“Our members are upset by those type of comments, our members came to Surrey for a reason. They came for a local, accountable police service,” said Buhrig.
In the past week, 94 per cent of them have signed a pledge saying if the Surrey Police Service is dissolved, they won’t apply for or work for the Surrey RCMP or any other RCMP detachment.
“300 members in Surrey would be a tremendous loss to the city, and it would be a tremendous loss to public safety in Surrey,“ said Buhrig.
Locke was asked about the union releasing the pledge to the media, and said she’s disappointed in the tactics of the Surrey Police Union.
“We are not going to be dictated to by a start-up police union on how we move forward. The plan is very clear: We are going to re-establish the RCMP as the police of jurisdiction in the city,” said Locke.
But that can’t happen without the approval of Solicitor General Mike Farnworth.
“I need to see a plan from the City of Surrey on how they intend to do that, as well as from the RCMP in terms of how they would intend to re-staff, and I have not yet received those plans,” said Farnworth.
Locke said the first phase of the plan will be released on Monday. The Surrey Police union is hoping the solicitor general will reject it.
“We do firmly believe between the benefits of municipal policing and the complexities around reversing this transition, that at the end of the day, the decision will be to move SPS forward,” said Buhrig.
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