It's that time again when we look back at Surrey's top stories with legs.
In journalism lingo, a story that’s not a simple one-off but rather continues to develop, often with twists and turns, is known as a story with “legs.”
It likely comes as no surprise that the policing transition once again tops our list for 2024, as it did in 2023 and 2022.
(Mother Nature took top spot in 2021, giving us a hard time with wildfires burning out of control, a brutal heat wave, atmospheric rivers and resulting floods – you know, the new normal.)
1. Surrey's policing transition
Here, for certain, is some considerable cross-over with our newsmaker of the year for 2024, Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke.
The Surrey Police Service replaced the Surrey RCMP as the city's police of jurisdiction on Nov. 29, marking an historic milestone in Canada's largest-ever policing transition, which is not expected to be completed until 2026/27. But midnight Friday, Nov. 29 was when the torch got passed from Surrey Mounties who, since May 1, 1951 had been the city's official police force.
And so the storied Surrey RCMP slipped into the past to become a provincial RCMP unit supporting the SPS, as the latter continues to grow its ranks. At that moment, Chief Const. Norm Lipinski made his first broadcast at the HQ to welcome in the new POJ.
"It was a highlight of my career," he said.
It's been a bumpy path to get there.
In early January 2024, survey results were released by the City of Surrey that suggested more than half of those polled wanted Surrey to stick with the RCMP as opposed to 29 per cent in favour of continuing with the transition to the Surrey Police Service.
In April, then-Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth proclaimed the SPS would take over on Nov. 29. This happened a few days before the City of Surrey’s petition to quash Farnworth’s order to replace the RCMP went to B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, with Justice Kevin Loo presiding.
Surrey lost its judicial review in May.
Surrey council, under former mayor Doug McCallum at its inaugural meeting on Nov. 5th, 2018, served notice to the provincial and federal governments it would end its contract with the RCMP to set up its own police force, resulting in an acrimonious six-year conflict between proponents and opponents of the transition.
2. Growing pains: Surrey's housing demands
Second on our list of 2024 stories with legs is what we're referring to as growing pains, which Surrey has plenty of.
Early in the year we learned of a provincial government projection that Surrey's population is expected to reach a whopping 1,054,376 by 2046, and in 2024, the number of residents who call Surrey home stood at 684,485.
Switching over to extended-day schedules in some Surrey high schools was introduced on account of the growth, and the school district made an urgent appeal for donations to fund school playgrounds, as the perennial need for more schools and fewer portables continues.
As more highrise tower projects came before Surrey council, an emerging theme was the displacement of low-income tenants living in older apartment buildings in the city's north end to make way for these. For example, council approved a two-tower project in Whalley in July despite speakers at a public hearing this would render their families homeless when the 57-unit rental apartment building already on site would be demolished.
That same month council endorsed a major new vision for the Scott Road corridor, providing a framework for long-term planning that is expected to to an area currently home to 41,120 residents boom by up to 289 per cent, to a population of 160,000.
Also in July, TransLink, facing and annual shortfall of $600 million as of 2026, fielded a "hypothetical" scenario where public transit in this region will be decimated if the provincial and federal governments don't step up with necessary funding to meet need and growth.
In September, emergency room doctors at Surrey Memorial Hospital raised an alarm for urgent action to fix the deteriorating health-care system.
Also in September, again on the displacing low-income renters front, council approved a five-tower residential project for Whalley at the cost of three existing rental apartment buildings on site after hearing from tenants at a public hearing distressed about losing their homes. Council also approved a residential tower for Guildford in November which required the demolishing of three low-rise rental apartment buildings already on site,
All this, besides the usual onslaught of higher taxes, fees, and prices for food made for difficult living for many people in 2024.
3. Massive drugs and weapons busts
Finally, third on our list of stories with legs in 2024 involves a series of massive drugs and weapons-related busts either in Surrey or involving Surrey residents that police revealed in the later part of the year, in November.
The first bust involved police taking down a "drug superlab" in Falkland, which the RCMP said was connected to international organized crime, following police searches there and in Surrey and Falkland that ended the production of 95 million doses of fentanyl. In Surrey, police seized 89 guns including 45 handguns and 21 AR-15s.
Not two weeks later, the RCMP held another presser to reveal that two Surrey residents and a Mexican national were arrested during an investigation into what police described as a "transnational organized crime group" linked to a Mexican drug cartel which resulted in the seizure of 23 guns, thousands of rounds of ammo and multiple kilos of drugs from a "heavily fortified" house in Fleetwood.
The police show-and-tell included a SWAT vest, 10 handguns, nine assault rifles, two shotguns, two hunting rifles, and silencers.
And again, another two weeks on, the Surrey RCMP staged what would be its last presser as the city's police of jurisdiction, this one involving a 14-month investigation by the drug unit which the Mounties said reaped one of the largest drug seizures in the detachment's history.
The Surrey RCMP Drug Unit, during seven searches in North Surrey, Vancouver, New Westminster, Richmond and Coquitlam, seized large quantities of cocaine, MDMA, methamphetamine, fentanyl, prescription and counterfeit prescription pills, guns, cash and vehicles, some of which were displayed at the presser in Newton.
The haul included 36.4 kilograms of fentanyl, $119,000 in Canadian cash, 23 kilograms of MDMA, 20.4 kilograms of cocaine, 23 kilograms of methamphetamine, 1,300 pills including counterfeit oxycodone, benzodiazepines, hydromorphone, amphetamine, methylphenidate, 600 prescription pills (T3) and non-prescription counterfeit oxycodone as well as 16 kilograms of benzodiazepine, 8.7 kilograms of xylazine “tranq," a kilogram of caffeine, a kilogram of phenacetin, six prohibited firearms (two ghost guns, four firearms smuggled in from the USA), ammunition, magazines, body armour, a 2024 Acura MDX, a 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee and a 2020 Kia Forte.
