If you dial 911 and ask for police in Surrey, B.C., does the RCMP or SPS respond?

If you're in urgent need of the police in Surrey, B.C., and call 911, who will respond? In a city still caught between two police forces, the answer is not a simple one.

The prolonged switch from the Surrey RCMP to the municipal Surrey Police Service (SPS) has stretched on for more than three years, with Mayor Brenda Locke still looking to stop the transition that began under her predecessor Doug McCallum.

But after the province suspended the entire Surrey Police Board and appointed an administrator in November, the fledgling SPS is aiming to play a larger role and make up more than 50 per cent of all officers in the city next year.

For now, municipal officers are still second to the Surrey RCMP in terms of the operational structure, according to SPS Chief Const. Norm Lipinski.

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That means if you dial 911, the RCMP picks up — but you still may see SPS officers respond to your call.

"I have constables and I have sergeants that are on the road," Lipinski told Gloria Macarenko, host of CBC's On The Coast. "When a sergeant arrives, he or she can take control of that incident. It may be RCMP constables, it may be SPS constables.

"The spirit of working together, the spirit of solving a crime or helping people, is very, very much alive. There is no compromise in community safety the way the system is now."

That sentiment was echoed by a Surrey RCMP spokesperson in an email to CBC News, who said they prioritized public safety while dispatching the closest officers when a call comes in.

"Surrey RCMP oversee and lead day-to-day operations, including all major crime investigations for the City of Surrey," the spokesperson wrote. 

"Officers from the [SPS] are deployed on the frontline as well as in some specialized units within the detachment alongside RCMP officers."

Transition looks to pick up pace

Lipinski says the decision to appoint RCMP as the primary force in charge of investigations in B.C.'s second-largest city by population was made before he was appointed to his post in 2020. 

One of the factors in that decision was likely the simple fact that RCMP officers outnumbered SPS officers, according to Lipinski.

But the chief and Surrey Police Board administrator Mike Serr have put in a budget request for 180 more SPS officers by the end of next year to add to the current complement of 400 officers, meaning they would outnumber the city's Mounties for the first time.

Lipinski and Serr have both said the request for the new officers aligned with the city's budgetary plans for the next four years.

"We don't deploy until there's a vacancy," Lipinski said. "There has to be room for us to go there. That has to occur when the RCMP demobilize or they transfer people to other detachments.

"It's not another layer to the budget. We are just replacing somebody who just left. In the most simplistic terms, it's one in, one out."

While Locke and the city have launched a judicial challenge to halt the transition, the province has introduced legislation to force the issue, months after issuing a strong recommendation that the city stick with the SPS. 

Lipinski said he wasn't too concerned with the review, but was instead looking forward to working out logistics regarding new hires, transferring assets from the RCMP and working with the federal government next year.

Surrey's budget is expected to be passed in the new year, with Locke saying there will be a large property tax increase due to the costs of the policing transition.