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Jack Knox: How Surrey’s ditching of RCMP could boost Island policing

Surrey doesn’t have a policing problem. It has a gang problem. Getting rid of the gangs is hard, though, so its new mayor and council have decided to get rid of the police instead.
RCMP generic
RCMP

Jack Knox mugshot genericSurrey doesn’t have a policing problem. It has a gang problem.

Getting rid of the gangs is hard, though, so its new mayor and council have decided to get rid of the police instead.

They have begun the process of ditching their 800-member RCMP detachment for a new municipal force — which, at least in theory, could be good news for Vancouver Island.

The Mounties are chronically shortstaffed, here and elsewhere. Recruitment is a challenge. The training depot in Regina is struggling to match the rate of attrition. In September, the Union of B.C. Municipalities was warned that a shortage of officers might force the RCMP to close smaller detachments and rely on larger regional hubs in places like Nanaimo.

The shortage is not new. In 2012, the Times Colonist’s Katie DeRosa discovered the RCMP’s effective vacancy rate on Vancouver Island was 17.4 per cent when unfilled jobs were combined with those left empty by parental leave and sick leave.

Last year, CTV reported 483 of the RCMP’s 6,610 funded positions in B.C. were vacant — that’s a rate of 7.3 per cent. Adding long-term leaves pushed it a few points higher.

So, yes, you would think having a bunch of extra bodies available would let the Mounties fill the holes (that is, if the province and Ottawa are serious about doing so and not just using the shortage as an excuse not to spend money on the units that they, as opposed to the municipalities, fund).

Have no doubt, there will be plenty of officers happy to move to the Island if given the option. Surrey’s new mayor and council might be shocked to hear this, but their city is not at the top of your typical RCMP officer’s wish list. Few want to be transferred from Campbell River (benchmark house price $436,000) or Kamloops ($406,000) to a place where the same home might push $1 million.

Nor would transferring to a newly created department be a simple question of patching over from red serge to blue.

It’s way more complicated than that, starting with the thorny issue of transferring pensions. New Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum has been quoted as saying the switch could be done in less than two years for about $120 million, but others think he’s dreaming. This could be a logistical nightmare.

Already the uncertainty must have the poor schmucks who work in the RCMP staffing offices reaching for the bottle. They have a tough task as it is, moving around the pieces of a mobile police force. Unlike their counterparts in municipal departments, Mounties expect to be moved from time to time. They have some say in where they land, though, often going to less-attractive destinations known as limited-duration posts where they serve a specified time — two years, maybe, or five — on the understanding that they will then be rewarded with a transfer somewhere sweeter.

That creates its own set of problems. There has to be a suitable job to go to. A dozen years ago, in an attempt to make some room on the south Island, the RCMP tried to transfer a bunch of long-serving Greater Victoria members to the Lower Mainland. Thanks but no thanks, those members said, and signed on with departments in Saanich, Central Saanich, Victoria and Oak Bay, which were thrilled to hire cops who A) had experience and B) didn’t have to be sent to the Justice Institute for (expensive) training. (Note that last week, Oak Bay police posted a cheeky tweet that began “Hey Surrey RCMP members,” linked to a departmental job posting, and included a GIF of Homer Simpson making a come-sit-down-here gesture.)

Of course, before Surrey goes ahead with its own force, it needs the approval of the provincial government, which could kibosh the plan — or go even further.

That is, maybe the province will finally bring in a regional police force for the Lower Mainland (and Greater Victoria, for that matter).

There has long been a push for such a change, but not even the Robert Pickton case, where jurisdictional fragmentation hindered the investigation and was blamed for allowed his killing spree to continue, was enough to overcome the opposition of parochial politicians and the sheer logistical challenge of creating a regional force. If they’re going to take on the massive task of blowing up Surrey, why not go all the way and blow up the policing model for the whole Lower Mainland?

As it is, many argue that the Mounties shouldn’t really be in the big-city policing business at all, that the RCMP is stretched too thin, being tasked with too many roles: everything from the three-Mountie detachment in Outer Frostbite, to drug units, to counter-terrorism, to fighting urban gangsters.

This isn’t just a Surrey story.