Yesterday, Mayor Brenda Locke announced the results of a vote made in camera for the police of jurisdiction. According to Richard Zussman of Global News, his sources told him the vote was 6 - 3 in favor of keeping the RCMP. The last vote taken in the fall was 5 - 4 and I think Linda Annis flipped to vote for the RCMP. The reason I think it's Linda is she is level headed and isn't a member of McCallum's or Locke's political party. She has flip flopped on this as she was with the keeping the RCMP while McCallum was in office but then changed to support the SPS after the last election. I respect her as she's a good councillor! She was the first to sign the non-disclosure agreement and read the unredacted police report prepared by the Director of Police Services for the Province of British Columbia.
The misinformation by Global and CTV is disheartening. For months they have been reporting a lot of errors. They continually say the SPS has 400 employees. Minister Farnworth says the SPS has 350 employees making everything think they are boots on the ground. According to Brian Edwards, Assistant Commissioner of the Surrey RCMP, 176 SPS officers have been working side by side with 544 RCMP officers. The difference is administrative and non-policing duties that can be reassigned within the RCMP. They are not police officers as the news is inferring.
I wish everything was transparent but the Provincial Government redacted most of the report. They made all the council members sign a non-disclosure agreement to read the unredacted copy. Linda Annis was the first to sign the NDA and she moved from supporting the SPS to the RCMP after reading the report. I have a PDF copy of the redacted report if anyone wants to read it. I can't attach it to my blog so message me and I'll email it to you. You can see exactly how much the province is sheltering from taxpayers.
An in camera meeting at Surrey City Hall was held on Wednesday. Because it's in camera, they cannot talk about it. We won't get transparency because the Province won't let any of them talk about the report, we as taxpayers paid for! As a taxpayer, I would like to know how they came up to the decision they made but that won't happen and it's frustrating.
If anyone is wondering about the $150 million over five years we were promised to receive from the Provincial Government if we transitioned to the SPS, the extra cost the government said of transitioning would be $30 million a year. Minister Farnworth didn't take into consideration, a new gun range, loss of the 2 helicopters and the IT infrastructure that everyone thought wasn't needed. No SPS car has a computer. They need an entire new computer system, software and hardware! Those costs were never accounted for! The $72 million in severance will be paid off, and we won't pay $30 million plus inflation forever.
The citizens of Surrey have asked for two referendums. They were both refused by our provincial government. We had an election and the platform of Brenda Locke was to continue with the RCMP as our police force. We've spoken and Minister Farnworth should listen to us!
