An election, then a trial, poses unusual test for Surrey’s Mayor McCallum
, including three former members of Parliament and a once-loyal councillor who defected from McCallum’s Safe Surrey Coalition to challenge the policies she’d initially supported.
The transition to the Surrey Police Service has been controversial. A group called “Keep the RCMP in Surrey” has been vehemently opposed to McCallum’s plan while his former colleague and now rival, Brenda Locke, is running to replace him under the Surrey Connect banner with a vow to reverse the shift in policing.
But three months later, McCallum was charged with public mischief related to his complaint, with a trial scheduled to start on Oct. 31. The BC Prosecution Service has said the investigation was handled by the B.C. RCMP major crime section, which is not based in Surrey. While she supported McCallum’s replacement of the RCMP when she was on council with him at the helm, Locke said decisions around the transition, which required provincial approval, were made “behind closed doors,” without input from councillors or the public, and will end up costing millions of dollars.
“The priority for me is to bring back ethical government,” she said, adding public safety is a major issue in a rapidly growing city rocked by gang-related shootings. Policing would also be transformed to allow bylaw officers to handle noise complaints, for example, while mental health professionals would respond to calls related to people in distress, Dhaliwal said.
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