You’ve heard of putting the cart before the horse? Here’s putting the police car before the force.
The showcasing of a “Surrey Police” car outside City Hall on May 7 is raising eyebrows as the provincial government has not yet approved city council’s plan to transition from the RCMP to a made-in-Surrey police force.
The Surrey RCMP declined to comment on the display as Mayor McCallum delivered his first state of the city address.
“I don’t think we’ll be speaking to that,” Corporal Elenore Sturko told the Now-Leader.
At council’s inaugural meeting on Nov. 5th, it served notice to the provincial and federal governments that Surrey is ending its contract with the RCMP – which has policed these parts since May 1, 1951 – to set up its own force.
“The only thing I can say is we have not seen the report,” said Jinny Sims, NDP MLA for Surrey-Panorama. “I know the solicitor general is waiting for the report and we will give it a very serious study because our primary goal is to ensure that there is a safe and judicious transition, if there is one.”
“I would be silly of me to comment before the report, right?”
Surrey Councillor Steven Pettigrew, who has been calling on city hall to consult the public on the transition plan before it goes to the provincial government for review, said the car display represented “a very strong assumption that everything is going to go fine.
“Again, I would have liked to have seen public consultation first,” he told the Now-Leader. “It’s a bold move.”
An example of a #SurreyBC police uniform, shown at State of City. pic.twitter.com/EhizTW7rtm
— Surrey Now-Leader (@SurreyNowLeader) May 7, 2019
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