By Link News Network
Surrey police Service transition and the cost associated to the transition has been an important topic of debate amongst mayoral candidates of Surrey. If city’s current mayor Doug McCallum and his team is supporting Surrey Police Service, mayoral candidate Gordie Hogg, Jinny Sims, and Sukh Dhaliwal have all announced that they will take a stalk of situation before taking any decision on whether Surrey should have its own municipal police force or RCMP.
While mayoral candidates for Surrey want to know the real cost of transition, Surrey Connect’s mayoral candidate Brenda Locke recently worked out numbers with her team and said that that keeping the RCMP would save Surrey residents more than half a billion dollars.
However, other mayor candidates were quick to react on Locke’s evaluation. Even those who do not support Surrey’s mayor and Surrey Police Transition were not very impressed with Locke’s announcement.
Surrey Forward and mayoral candidate Jinny Sims in a press release asked the question “Then why did you approve the police transition, Brenda?”
She said while no one has the full cost of the transition due lack of data sharing, “Brenda Locke has to answer one question,” said Sims, “Why did she approve this ill-fated transition in the first place? Never has one Councillor and now Mayoral candidate had such a negative impact on the City of Surrey.”
“And now Brenda is running away from her own decision! In her release of September 23, Brenda and her team highlight the complete lack of information available to Council about the shift the Surrey Police Service. BUT SHE VOTED YES ANYWAY,” said Sims.
Surrey First candidate for mayor Gordie Hogg said recent media comments by Locke show just how important it is to “get the real facts and costs about the police transition” in order to give Surrey taxpayers a referendum on who should police the city.
Hogg also said in a press release, “In a media interview, Locke was asked about the costs of police transition to date, and the cost of shutting it down and keeping the RCMP. Locke replied, ‘there will be a cost of severing the four or five senior (SPS) members … but outside of that there isn’t a lot of expenditures … so the costs are minimal.’ In addition, Locke said existing SPS officers would ‘find a place to go and it may well be with the RCMP.’
“The simple fact is, no one, including Brenda Locke, has the facts, or real numbers,” said Hogg. “Doug McCallum has done a terrific job of hiding the numbers and details, so until we press pause on the transition and get the facts, comments like those made yesterday by Brenda Locke just don’t add up. Does anyone really think the cost of shutting down the transition will just be the severance costs of four or five senior SPS officers? Does anyone really believe that the RCMP will just absorb hundreds of SPS hires into their ranks and culture with the wave of a magic wand?”
Talk about wishful thinking, again with no real facts or details. Wishing and hoping is not a plan, Hogg added.
