A community rally at Surrey City Hall last week on the issue of gang violence attracted thousands.
Wednesday’s rally was sparked by the apparent gang slayings of two teenagers, Jaskarn (Jason) Singh Jhutty, 16, and Jaskaran (Jesse) Singh Bhangal, 17. Their bodies were found June 4 in a rural area south of Cloverdale.
Police have no evidence the two were involved in gangs, and continue to search for the killer(s).
The large attendance at the Wake Up! rally indicates many have been deeply shaken by this tragedy and are looking for answers.
There is no simple solution, but one issue raised is the effectiveness of Surrey RCMP in dealing with gang violence, which has become a regular occurrence in Surrey.
Rally organizer Gurpreet Singh Sahota said the Surrey RCMP detachment has too few officers to deal with crime. He compared the just over 800 officers in Surrey to almost 1,400 in Vancouver.
The police-to-citizen ratio is one to 450 in Vancouver, while it is one to 620 in Surrey. Considering that a third of Surrey residents are 19 and under, and police often spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with crimes connected to younger people, the ratio may be even more skewed.
Sahota asked a question that has been raised periodically. Would Surrey be better off with its own police force, rather than an RCMP detachment?
Many Surrey RCMP officers added in recent years are recruits fresh from the training academy in Regina. Most come from other parts of the country. They cannot be expected to understand the community well.
The RCMP has little experience in operating large urban detachments, other than in B.C. It also has a well-established practice of moving officers from detachment to detachment. While this is not as rigid as it used to be, it still means many Surrey officers do not stay long.
A local police force would cost taxpayers more. The Surrey RCMP does get some federal funding, however, that also means officers from Surrey are called in for federal duties from time to time, such as the recent G7 meeting in Quebec.
At one time, city police forces such as Vancouver’s were not well-respected. Training was limited; the Vancouver Police, in particular, had a number of significant corruption issues. That was many years ago. In the past 40 years, city police officers have obtained standardized training at the Justice Institute of B.C.
Delta has had its own police force for many years. They have a policy of “no call too small,” which residents are more than happy to pay higher taxes for.
Surrey RCMP officer in charge, Asst. Commissioner Dwayne McDonald, plans to ask council for a significant number of new officers. He also wants more gang-enforcement resources, necessary in the short term.
In the longer term, it would make sense to do a detailed study comparing the RCMP and a local police force – looking into such issues at how long the average RCMP officer stays in Surrey, how often RCMP officers are called out of Surrey for other duties and the differences in training.
Frank Bucholtz writes Wednesdays for Peace Arch News.