Surrey police add biggest group of new boots on ground in transition
Surrey police Chief Norm Lipinski estimates the force will have 150 officers on the ground by October municipal elections and be beyond the point-of-no-return to reverse the transition.
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Thirty-four new pairs of boots hit the ground for the Surrey police service Monday, its single biggest deployment to date, bringing the fledgling force’s numbers to 120 front-line officers with a momentum Chief Norm Lipinski reckons can’t be reversed.
Creation of the force, a key election promise of Mayor Doug McCallum, has been politically controversial, causing a split on city council with a community group actively campaigning to keep the RCMP going into a fall municipal election.
Coun. Brenda Locke, who will be running to unseat McCallum in October, has vowed that with enough support, “we’re going to stop the transition in its tracks,” in launching her campaign last February. She has since raised questions in the media about the transparency of SPS’s finances and its use of high-priced PR assistance.
Lipinski said that a new council could vote to reverse it, “but the province makes the final decision and three levels of government right now, including the province, (are) moving, moving very quickly to having this transition work,” Lipinski said.
And besides the legal challenge of convincing the province to change its decision, as prescribed by the Police Act, there’s the 200-plus employees SPS will have by this fall, between 150 officers on the street and 80 or so in human resources and command.
“What are you going to do with 200 people, and who’s going to fire them?” Lipinski said. “In my opinion, as well as the (Surrey police board’s) opinion, I think I can speak on behalf of them, it’s way too far down the road.”
Surrey will spend $72.5 million on SPS this year, about 37 per cent of its overall $194.8 million budget for all police services, including civilian support.
And of the $63.7 million allocated to one-time transition expenses, Lipinski said a considerable amount has been spent, including $15 million on an information technology system, which the chief said wouldn’t be financially responsible to unwind.
The 34-of-35 officers in July’s deployment gathered in a board room of the ad-hoc offices Surrey police are using during the transition, looking very much like a cross-section of the multicultural community they’ll be serving, which to Lipinski was very much by design.
Lipinski offered some words of encouragement to the new ranks, standing at ease in crisp, sharply creased uniform blues, before they walked down to the Surrey RCMP detachment on 57th Avenue to start a two-day orientation, the last step in a six-week training program all experienced recruits go through before beginning work.
“I think what’s important is the culture that we build,” Lipinski said, “whether it’s great investigations, whether it’s community engagement, whether it’s our operational skills, taking care of each other, working side-by-side with our RCMP colleagues and really serving the community.
“Once you get through orientation, go out there, serve the community and be safe.”
Monday’s deployment saw veteran recruits from municipal police forces and RCMP detachments across the Lower Mainland, police services in Edmonton, Calgary and the Alberta RCMP.
Lipinski said the pace of Surrey police’s recruiting has picked up to make up for past shortfalls with officers joining the force with an average of nine years’ experience, though some obviously have more, judging by the appearance of silver-haired veterans with sergeants’ stripes on sleeves and officers’ pips on shoulders in the room.
For a lot of veterans, SPS represents a chance to “contribute to building an organization from the ground up,” Lipinski said. “(It’s) a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
The RCMP remain Surrey’s police-of-jurisdiction and take the lead in day-to-day operations, but at a strength of 120, Lipinski said the SPS is reaching a critical mass to start taking roles beyond uniformed patrol, such as the investigative units and the gang squad.
And as SPS ramps up its numbers, anticipated to hit 295 by spring 2023, the RCMP will scale back its own from a contingent now at around 700, Lipinski said. While it will likely be 2024 before SPS gets closer to hitting full strength, Lipinski estimates a change of command when the Surrey force becomes the police of jurisdiction for Surrey as the Mounties continue to wind down.
“This is a merger, if you will,” Lipinski said borrowing the business-world term. “So we have to transition and we build up (before) we switch command.”
Behind the scenes, Lipinski admitted there have been some tensions. But he dismissed them as more of a cultural clash between the SPS, which can implement changes quickly based on decisions made by a police board that meets monthly, and the RCMP, which has to navigate the bureaucracy of a 20,000-member national police force.
On the street, however, the chief said the SPS and RCMP are “melding very well together,” with little confusion or hesitation with the public, notwithstanding the very public campaign to keep the RCMP in Surrey.
“We have a saying in policing, ‘It doesn’t matter the stripe, when there’s a call you go to it and we all collaborate and get the job done,’ ” Lipinski said.
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