Quote:
Originally Posted by paradigm4
No, which is why many munis stay with the RCMP despite all the structural challenges of paying for a police force with no ability to manage or oversee them.
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The Federal Goverment partially pays for RCMP coverage based on the size of the municipality. The more populated the area the less the feds cover. Surrey outgrew financial aid decades ago. RCMP are designed for small local towns not cities.
As such it has been a big mistake by Diane Watts to resign on with the RCMP for I believe another 25 years. They are an extremely high cost police force (second to Translink) and inefficient at City enforcement. Everything they do goes through Ottawa for channels NOT through Surrey.
Cities like Surrey need to bite the bullet and convert to municipal police. In fact all the police chiefs need to suck it up and swallow their egos and create a Metro police force. This way one city talks to another which current doesn't happen in many cases.
Further to that Watts has spent years keeping taxes so low while allowing out of control development that Surrey is left with an extremely undermanned police force, poor transportation and bad services.
Even after they hire another 100 officers (which will take years) they will still not be near Vancouver for officers per population count. Oh by the way there are about 300 graduates from RCMP school per year so if you think the Feds are going to hand 1/3 over to one city in Canada think again.
In addition the 100 officers means 25 per location and 4.25 per platoon. Once you add in desk time, holidays, sick time, disability etc you get about 1 officer per district on the street.