RCMP Responsible for at Least 3 Deaths in Surrey So Far in 2019: Few Public Details

Jeff Shantz


RCMP in Surrey have been involved in the deaths of at least three people so far in 2019. In all cases little information has been provided publicly and police have not been held to any sort of public account. In the case of the RCMP shooting and killing Nona McEwan and Randy Crosson, police initially put out information that was misleading and implied that one of the victims (Crosson) had killed the other (McEwan).


RCMP shot and killed Nona McEwan and Randy Crosson in a situation described by police as a hostage taking on March 29, 2019. The Independent Investigations Office (IIO) later revealed that RCMP had shot and killed both victims.


The (IIO) is also investigating after a woman fell to her death in the presence of RCMP officers on August 13, 2019 in Surrey. The IIO report that RCMP responded to an apartment complex in the 14000 block of 103A Avenue regarding a woman on the edge of a ninth floor balcony. Police entered the building, and, at some point, the woman fell. She died on the scene. No other details have yet been released publicly.


The latter case was the second IIO investigation of RCMP in a matter of days. Police shot a man on 135A Street in Whalley on August 14.


This has happened in a context in which RCMP have secured more resources over years under multiple moral panics around gangs and homelessness. Discussions of policing in Surrey have largely been uncritical and police and pro-police business associations (like the Surrey Board of Trade) dominate the public narrative.

Poorbashing Bylaw Targets People Living in Campers in Surrey

Jeff Shantz


Surrey City Council is one again wasting public time, money, and energy devising another way to criminalize and punish poor people rather than positively addressing issues of poverty, housing unaffordability, or homelessness in the city. This time Surrey Council plans to introduce a new bylaw to ban people from staying in a camper or RV parked overnight on city streets.


This comes from a city government that over the years has demonized and criminalized homeless people sheltering in tents on 135A Street, “the Strip,” in Whalley, and done the same to poor people living in older trailer parks, especially along King George Boulevard. In those cases, as in the case against campers and RVs the tool has been bylaw enforcement. On the Strip bylaw officers and police took and trashed homeless people’s belongings on a regular basis. In the trailer parks bylaw officers and RCMP officers constructed a moral panic over drug use and sex work to target residents for stigmatization and criminalization. The trailer parks had served as some of the last remaining lower cost housing stock in 
Metro Vancouver.


The proposed bylaw, to be considered at the City Council meeting on October 21, 2019, would make it illegal to be found inside a parked camper or RV between 10 PM and 6 AM. Punishments would range from ticketing, really helpful for people who are already lacking funds, to having their vehicle towed—the theft of someone’s home.


The level of cynicism displayed by Council is expressed in hypocritical statements made by councillors to justify this poorbashing attack. Councillor Laurie Guerra has the audacity (and apparent lack of self-awareness) to claim that criminalizing people from sleeping in campers or RVs is about their safety. As if taking their home and putting them on the streets would make people safe somehow.


In Guerra’s words: “We don’t want to see that happening where people are pulled off to the side of the road and sleeping in a vehicle. That’s not safe.”


The authoritarian nature of this bylaw is also explicit. It is designed to make people dependent on, and subject to surveillance by the state. Says Guerra: “I know that staff will ticket or tow only as a last resort. They will do everything that they can to help or assist the occupants of the vehicle with social services.” The authoritarianism is paired with a patronizing paternalism that poses the stick as a carrot. The staff report on the bylaw says that criminalization will “provide greater motivation to the occupants of large vehicles to move to suitable housing.” But people are “servicing” themselves by housing themselves. In housing that those using it have determined is suitable for themselves.


This, as is true of the other cases of targeted poorbashing through bylaws, is largely about satisfying business interests in Surrey. Business Improvement Areas and the Surrey Board of Trade drive much of the repressive policing agenda in Surrey. Guerra admits that this bylaw is driven by complaints by businesses about vehicles being parked on streets. She reports: “The city will often get reports of recreational vehicles parked on streets or in front of businesses, or in front of homes. Often they’re unsightly and cause a lot of garbage and debris.” You know what actually causes a lot of garbage and debris in Surrey—businesses. And they are quite often unsightly.


The bylaw would even take the demands of business further, limiting the daytime hours when people are inside parked campers or RVs when “adjacent to businesses.” We might note that there are no similar targeted bylaws addressing driving overnight or which ban parked vehicles arbitrarily during the day.


This is a straight up assault in the business driven, City managed, class war in Surrey.

Activists Get Inside Surrey’s New Migrant Detention Center

Jeff Shantz


No borders, prison abolition, and anti-police organizers managed to gain access to the new migrant detention center on 76 Avenue at 130 Street in Surrey British Columbia (Unceded Coast Salish territories). Inside they disrupted a Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) training session for guards and put up a “Stop Deportations, Migrant Justice” banner visible to pedestrians and motorists outside. The action was part of the Multi-city Day of Action against Migrant Detention in Canada. October 3, 2019.


The new migrant detention center in Surrey is a structure of repression, containment, and state violence targeting racialized, precarious, working class people. It builds upon and expands Canadian state practices of colonialism and imperialism. It is run by the Canada Border Services Agency and will join migrant detention centers currently in operation in Laval, Quebec, Toronto, and Vancouver.


The institution, still under construction at the time of the banner drop, has been clouded in secrecy, with little information about it available publicly. Border control agents are being recruited and trained for the center.


Getting access to the space in this way has not previously been possible.



Video of the action and banner hanging can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/user/RadicalCriminology

Surrey Cops Rip Turban Off Head of Sikh Man in Custody

A Surrey man, Kanwaljit Singh, has filed a lawsuit against the RCMP alleging excessive force for ripping his turban off his head and pulling his hair out of its topknot while he was in custody on June 30, 2017. Singh claims that RCMP also twisted his arm and grabbed his hair. One of the officers involved has been identified as Sergeant Brian Blair who was the non-commissioned officer in charge of the Surrey RCMP detachment holding cell area.  

Singh calls himself a “devout Sikh man who wears his turban as part of his religious practice.” He views the removal of the turban as a violent action that is “an insult to those beliefs.”

The defendants in the suit to the BC Supreme Court include the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General of BC, the Attorney General of Canada and Sergeant Blair.

RCMP claim that their policy and practice does not allow the wearing of turbans in holding cells. They do not deny removing Singh’s turban but say doing so was not excessive.

Charges Stayed against Elizabeth Cucheran, Cop Who Killed Hudson Brooks

RCMP Constable Elizabeth Cucheran shot and killed 20-year-old Hudson Brooks on July 18, 2015 outside the South Surrey RCMP detachment. Cucheran shot the young Brooks nine times, of a total of 12 shots she fired at him. Brooks was in obvious distress at the time, was shirtless and shoeless. He needed support and acre, but that is not what police provide. They are agents of state violence and brutality.

On September 18, 2019, the prosecution service of British Columbia did what prosecutors typically do in cases of police killing members of our communities. They let the killer cop off and stayed the charges against Cucheran. Charges that only included aggravated assault and assault with a weapon, no murder or even manslaughter. For shooting someone nine times. Cucheran was so out of control that she even shot herself, a fact that RCMP initially tried to imply was a result of a shootout with the victim.

The Brooks family and friends are obviously, and rightly, hurt by this decision, an additional act of state violence against them. This decision is an outrage and an offense to our communities. And a killer cop is free to terrorize our communities further.

IIO Investigates Death of Man after Release from Custody

The Independent Investigations Office (IIO) is investigating the death of a man who was struck and killed by a vehicle shortly after being released from police custody in Surrey on September 14, 2019. The IIO reports that the man was walking near 152 Street and 56 Avenue when he was struck by a vehicle a bit after 10:30 PM. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The IIO is investigating what role police actions or inactions might have played in the man’s death.

Platforming Fascists: Surrey Board of Trade Host Maxime Bernier (People’s Party of Canada Leader)

Business has provided the base of support for fascism historically. Fascists provide the bare force of violence to smash working class movements and community solidarity in times of crisis (including political legitimation crises). So it is in no way surprising that the Surrey Board of Trade is hosting People’s Party of Canada (PPC) leader Maxime Bernier for a “town hall” on September 25, 2019.

Bernier’s PPC has been associated with, identified as, a fascist formation, not only because of its positions and statements, which express xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism, and anti-migrant sentiments—but because some party members and candidates have connections with fascist organizations and groups, or have been members of those groups themselves. Bernier himself has associated with identified fascists.

Details of the Surrey Board of Trade townhall with Maxime Bernier are as follows:

Name: September 25, 2019 - Fourth Business Town Hall with People's Party of Canada Leader, Maxime Bernier

Date: September 25, 2019

Time: 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM PDT

Location:

Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel 15269 104 Ave, Surrey

The event is listed as free to attend. Community members who oppose racism, xenophobia, and fascism in our community, and do not appreciate the Surrey Board of Trade providing a platform for racists, xenophobes, and fascists in our city (no matter how much businesses benefit from fascism) might wish to show up to let them all know where we stand.

Surrey Board of Trade Copaganda: Police Officer of the Year Awards

Policing has always been founded in and serves the function of protecting and reproducing capitalist markets, unequal distribution of resources, and conditions of profitability. So it is no surprise that businesses promote the cops (whose mandate they actually drive) who serve them.

On Thursday, October 10, 2019, the Surrey Board of Trade is holding the 23^rd of its copaganda “Surrey Police Officer of the Year Awards” to thank the cops in Surrey who have best served business in harassing and punishing poor and homeless people, surveilling and regulating racialized, Indigenous, working class people and communities, making parents fearful of their children, stoking fear politics, and generally making Surrey safe for capitalism. This in a city where police have killed at least two people and shot at least one more, this year alone.

Details of this copaganda exercise are as follows:

Name: October 10, 2019 - 23rd Annual Surrey Police Officer of the Year Awards

Date: October 10, 2019

Time: 6:00 PM - 9:30 PM PDT

Location:

Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel

15269 104 Avenue, Surrey

The cost to attend is $105 + tax, so it is clearly designed for regular folks.

It would be a real shame if people showed up to demonstrate against this obscene spectacle of authoritarianism, state violence, subjugation, and the massive waste of needed public resources on police rather than communities.

Labour and Policing: Conversations on Policing Sex Work and Labour Movements (An Anti-Police Power Surrey Panel)

Anti-Police Power Surrey (APPS) is hosting a panel, “Labour and Policing: Conversations on Policing Sex Work and Labour Movements.”

At Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey Campus (Unceded Coast Salish territories).

Wednesday, September 11, 2019. 7-10

Fir Building, Room 128

Speakers include:

Mary Shearman (Simon Fraser University). “Histories of Policing and Sex Work.”

Eva Ureta (APPS). “On Histories of Police Associations and On Current Policing in Surrey.”

C. Sano (Canadian Union of Postal Workers). “Labour Movements and Union Busting in Canada.”

Jeff Shantz (APPS and KPU Faculty). “On the Political Functions of Policing.”

Anti-Police Power Surrey (APPS) is a group of people living and working in Surrey who oppose the domination of police, police violence and repression, and the wasteful, and wildly disproportionate, expenditure of public resources on policing in Surrey. APPS calls for social resources for communities not cops, for people not police and aims for the development of non-repressive social supports and care.

“Why Do Police Kill?” Project

Criminology students at Kwantlen Polytechnic University have launched a research project on police killings in Canada, “Why Do Police Kill?” The project and website originated in Criminology professor Jeff Shantz’s second year Crime, Criminal Justice, and the Media course held over the Summer Semester 2019.

This is an important project which documents and attempts to shed some light on police killings in Canada. Police killings receive far too little attention in Canada and relatively little public response outside of the courageous efforts of family and loved ones.

The site, which will be regularly updated, can be found at: whydopolicekill.com

RCMP Evacuate Central City Mall: Won’t Give Details

On Sunday, August 25, 2019, Surrey RCMP evacuated the busy Central City mall. Hundreds of people were forced to leave the mall and police tape was put up across entrances. Yet a day later no detailed explanation has been provided by police for their actions. Once again the community is left without basic information or explanation as police control what the public will be allowed to know.


CTV Vancouver reports this:

Police confirmed the evacuation Sunday afternoon, saying that they were called to the scene for a “public safety matter” at one of the larger retailers in the mall.

Asked for more details about the nature of the issue, police declined to comment, saying they couldn't identify the specific store because that store was a victim. (Holliday CTV News)

This is somewhat contradictory. If it was a “public safety matter” than the public deserves to know the nature of the safety issue, what it involved, what was done to resolve it, and why. Yet based on news reports, the RCMP say it was actually a private business security matter. The RCMP acting as corporate security for a large retailer. They even suggest that this private (not public) matter is their reason for not saying more publicly.

There have been too many police actions in Surrey in which RCMP refuse to provide proper information to the public. This includes a school evacuation last year in which a school official reported at a Parent Advisory Committee meeting that the RCMP knew there was no reasonable threat yet decided to take advantage of a situation to do a practice run for their gang response teams.

These sorts of actions allow police to ramp up public panics and manipulate fear politics. All toward the end of more dependence on police. Another way in which Surrey residents are not well served by policing in our city.

Surrey Woman Falls to Death During RCMP Encounter on August 13, 2019

Independent Investigations Office (IIO) of British Columbia is carrying out its second investigation of RCMP in Surrey in a two day period.  On August 13, 2019, a woman fell to her death in the presence of RCMP officers at an apartment complex in the 14000 block of 103A Avenue. The IIO are also investigating after RCMP shot a man on 135A Street in Whalley on August 14.

RCMP Shot Man Outside Lookout Shelter on 135A Street in Whalley

On August 14, 2019, Surrey RCMP shot a man. Few details were initially released. It has now been reported that the man was shot outside the Lookout Society’s Gateway Shelter on 135A Street. The police shooting occurred around 4 am.


A witness working in the area at the time the shooting took place reports that he heard police fire either five or six shots. Police closed 135A Street between 106 Avenue and 108 Avenue for about 12 hours.


The area along 135A Street where the police shooting occurred has been the site of much police violence and criminalization of poor and homeless people. A homeless camp on The Strip was forcibly evicted by police after an extended period of harassment and violence by police and bylaw enforcement officers.


Police and the City of Surrey have held up their model of integrated and repressive operations as an exemplar of layered policing and have worked to export the model to other municipalities in British Columbia.

RCMP Shoot Man in Surrey, August 14, 2019

RCMP have shot a man in the early morning hours of August 14, 2019 in Surrey, British Columbia. Few details have been released as of this report’s writing.


The RCMP claim officers were called at around 4 am concerning a man alleged to be holding a machete. They claim that the officers had some “interaction” with a man before they “fired their service pistols.” The man was shot and is in hospital with what are said to be non-life-threatening gunshot injuries.


No one else has been reported injured and there has been no public confirmation that anyone was holding a machete. None of the police claims have been independently confirmed publicly.

Cops Lie: Police Deception and the Killing of Nona McEwan and Randy Crosson

Jeff Shantz



Cops lie. That basic truth is perhaps nowhere more in evidence than in the public statements made by police immediately after they kill someone. Too often in such cases police engage in victim blaming or the purposeful framing of information to imply that victims had threatened police or engaged in some sort of exchange.


We have seen examples of the latter most recently in Surrey, British Columbia, when RCMP shot and killed Nona McEwan and Randy Crosson in a situation described by police as a hostage taking on March 29, 2019. For more than a month RCMP put out a message publicly implying that Randy Crosson had killed Nona McEwan.


When asked directly if he could say conclusively that a police bullet did not hit Nona McEwan, the Surrey Now-Leader reports that Integrated Homicide Investigation Team spokesperson Corporal Frank Jang replied:


“No, I mean that’s all part of the investigation that’s happening now. There will be updates coming forth from the IIO but all those details, the exact mechanism, entries, where the shots came from, that’s all going to be part of the investigation. I can’t comment further because it’s still ongoing.”



Not long afterward the lie was put to this statement when the IIO reported that RCMP had shot and killed both McEwan and Crosson. Certainly, officers at the scene, and IHIT member Jang must have known police had done the shooting. And we might well figure that they knew this over a month of statements that posed Crosson as potentially the killer.


This would seem to be an effort at deceiving the public. The hope for police would be that by the time counter-information came out the public would have moved on or forgotten the issue.


This is not the first time that police have acted in this way, even in Surrey. On July 18, 2015, 20-year-old Hudson Brooks was shot and killed by RCMP Constable Elizabeth Cucheran. Cucheran had also been shot and in the first public reports by RCMP it was suggested that the officer had somehow been injured by Brooks, the implication being a shootout. It turns out this was a police distortion, again likely designed to cast suspicion on the victim and to legitimize the officers’ actions publicly. It was eventually revealed that the officer had been shot by a weapon fired by police (no weapons other than police weapons were on the scene)—by the officer herself in a panic.


Residents of Metro Vancouver will also remember the RCMP tasing and killing of Robert Dziekański. Immediately following their killing of Dziekański, RCMP made a series of public statements proven later to be false. They told a tale apparently designed to denigrate Dziekański in the public eye, initially claiming he threw things and screamed and yelled after police arrived. Police also suggested that Dziekański was intoxicated. All of this was contradicted when a bystander video taken by traveler Paul Pritchard came forward. The video showed that, contrary to police, the taser was not used as a last resort but was deployed almost immediately. Police took Pritchard’s video and refused to return it until he brought forward a lawsuit for its return.



Cops lie to control information to the public. The silence regarding the RCMP killing of Randy Crosson and Nona McEwan must be broken. The public needs to know immediately when cops kill. And we need to know the names of killer cops. We have every right to know the killer cops active in our communities and to know, and oppose, repeat offenders being unleashed in our communities. To get rid of them (and to move toward community not cops).  

Against Poor Bashing in Surrey—From NIMBY Vigilantes and Cops Alike

Jeff Shantz



In response to planned supportive housing projects, slated for Guidlford and Whalley, poor bashing vigilantes in Surrey, British Columbia (unceded Coast Salish territories) have circulated flyers stigmatizing and demonizing homeless people. Their efforts seem to have been oriented toward getting City Council to vote against the two projects and the flyers were distributed ahead of the vote at Council on July 22, 2019. This both reflects and reinforces the fear and panic stoked by police, bylaw enforcement, and businesses against homeless people in the city through practices of criminalization.


The Guildford flyer provides a stigmatizing rant against homeless people that tries to diminish, other, and exclude. It uses all too familiar poor bashing terms to knock residents and neighbors in our city on the basis of class and residence status. These sorts of rants increase conditions for criminalization, further stigmatization, marginalization, and punishment. They can have deadly consequences. While these sorts of hateful manifestations might help justify expanded police budgets to regulate homeless people, they are not about community safety in any real sense. They only serve to stoke the fires of the hateful even further, while providing cover for further diversion of police resources to criminalize poverty.


There is an additional hypocrisy that seeks to present hateful diatribes against homeless people as neighborhood concern or even neighborhood responsibility. The Guildford flyer attempts to position angry people who oppose support for homeless people (or who resent the presence of homeless people period) as community members simply trying to protect their neighbourhoods. APPS rejects this cynical attempt at framing the issue. Homeless people are part of our communities and residents of our neighbourhoods. The Guildford letter would try to set up a division between supposedly legitimate community members (i.e. property owners?) and illegitimate ones (i.e. homeless people). Or to suggest that, actually, homeless people are somehow not part of our communities after all, fully deserving of welcoming and respect.


Angry NIMBYists often pose as concern for neighbourhood what is really prejudice toward homeless people. Concern for our neighbourhoods should extend to concern for our neighbours, who might well be homeless. Or is it really only a concern for property values and business profits after all?


Groups like Anti-Police Power Surrey (APPS) oppose the criminalization of poverty and homelessness by police and bylaw enforcement and oppose poor bashing vigilantes who stigmatize and target homeless people.


While APPS recognizes that surveillance “housing” is not properly housing, we completely and unreservedly reject the mean-spirited poor bashing of neighborhood vigilantes who would spread stigmatizing and denigrating materials and who would campaign against homeless people.


Dozens of people spoke in favor of the projects, including a few currently homeless residents in Surrey. While many NIMBYists spoke against them, the projects were approved.

RCMP Kill Two People in Surrey Standoff: Statement from Anti-Police Power Surrey

SURREY, UNCEDED COAST SALISH TERRITORIES: On March 29, Nona McEwan and Randy Crosson were killed during an alleged hostage taking and police standoff in Surrey, BC. The Independent Investigations Office of BC (IIO) waited over a month, until May 2, to confirm that both deaths were the result of multiple shots fired by the RCMP.


During the past month, RCMP and media reports have falsely implied that Crosson was responsible for McEwan’s death. Integrated Homicide Investigation Team spokesperson Corporal Frank Jang told the Surrey Now-Leader that, of the two deaths, “one [is] believed to be a police-involved shooting, one is not.” 


According to Jeff Shantz, professor of criminology at KPU and member of Anti-Police Power Surrey (APPS), “Police control the flow of information when it comes to police-involved deaths, which allows them to shape the narrative. In this case, as in other similar cases, police have suggested that officers acted heroically, while the victims were somehow to blame.”


Between 2000 and 2017, police were involved in over 460 fatal interactions with civilians across Canada. Criminal charges were laid against officers in only 18 of those cases. There have been only two convictions. “There’s a myth that there is no police violence in Canada. In reality, police are a violent institution. Between 2000 and 2017, there were 14 confirmed police-involved deaths in Surrey alone – an average of almost one killing every year,” said Lenée Son, longtime resident of Surrey and APPS member.


The IIO was established in 2012, after the police killing of Robert Dziekański, to increase police accountability in BC, which has the highest rate of police-involved fatalities in Canada. However, there are no mechanisms to compel police to provide information publicly or even participate in IIO investigations. The IIO relies on police for training and uses former officers in investigations, which compromises this agency’s capacity to be fully independent.


“We’re told that police exist to protect us, but cases like this show that police don’t keep us safe. They are a threat to public safety. This is why Anti-Police Power Surrey is organizing to defund, disarm, and disband the police,” explained APPS member Dave Diewert. “We call for justice for Nona McEwan, Randy Crosson, and countless others killed by police in Surrey and across Canada.”

Communities Not Cops: Anti-Police Power Surrey Against “Police Week”

While necessary community services go badly underfunded or excluded by the City, police in Surrey have no shortage of resources for whatever exercise they deem useful to them. This includes for useless copaganda contrivances like “Police Week.”


Join Anti-Police Power Surrey (APPS) in opposing this waste of public resources and further intrusion of police into our communities and daily living in Surrey. APPS is a group of people living and working in Surrey who oppose the domination of police, police violence and repression, and the wasteful, and wildly disproportionate, expenditure of public resources on policing in Surrey. APPS calls for social resources for communities not cops, for people not police and aims for the development of non-repressive social supports and care.



Details of the event are as follows:



“Saturday, May 11, 2019

1:00 pm

Surrey RCMP Main Detachment

14355 57 Ave, Surrey



Please invite your friends and share widely!



You can count on the Surrey RCMP to show up at community events and festivals, take selfies, and hand out stickers to kids. This is part of a concerted effort to normalize the massive police presence in Surrey by branding police as ‘family friendly’ and ‘community oriented.’ But regardless of any public relations efforts, police remain a threat to our communities. They surveil and harass homeless people, enforce the catastrophic war on drugs, and terrorize racialized and Indigenous communities, profiling and brutalizing young people of colour with impunity.



On May 11, the RCMP is holding a ‘family friendly’ open house to celebrate Police Week. We are taking a page out of their playbook and showing up at their event with our own community outreach table. Join us to voice opposition to constantly expanding police budgets, challenge dominant narratives that conflate increased policing with public safety, and help build a movement against police power in Surrey!”

Did Surrey RCMP Kill Two People? Still No Answers

It has now been three weeks since RCMP in Surrey were involved in a shooting in which two people were left dead and few details have been released publicly. It has been reported that police fired shots during what has been called an alleged hostage taking (by the man who was killed) on March 29, 2019. The Independent Investigations Office (IIO), the agency that examines cases of police harm to civilians in British Columbia, has stated that the victims were a man and a woman who knew each other. Friends and family of the woman who was killed have identified her as Nona McEwan. The man has been identified as Randy Crosson. It has been reported too that they had a child together.


What is not known after nearly a month is what role police played in the killings. There has been some speculation that police killed both people in a discharge of gunfire.


An information bulletin put out by the Independent Investigations Office (IIO) reports that the man was pronounced dead at the scene and the woman died at hospital (with neither named in the bulletin). At the scene, the IIO also said that shots were fired by members of the Emergency Response Team. According to the IIO, as reported in the Surrey Now-Leader:


“The cause of the injuries to both persons are yet to be confirmed. We’re not sure if the female was killed by shots, we’re still trying to determine what caused her injuries and what led to her death. We do know that police took shots but we don’t know if they’re the ones that caused the injuries to the male.”



When asked if he could say conclusively that a police bullet did not hit Nona McEwan, the Now-Leader reports that Integrated Homicide Investigation Team spokesperson Corporal Frank Jang replied:


“No, I mean that’s all part of the investigation that’s happening now. There will be updates coming forth from the IIO but all those details, the exact mechanism, entries, where the shots came from, that’s all going to be part of the investigation. I can’t comment further because it’s still ongoing.”



Surrey deserves better than this. Families, friends, and community members deserve better than this when police commit acts of violence in our communities.


Unfortunately, there are no mechanisms to compel police to provide information publicly or even participate in investigations. The IIO relies on police for training and uses former officers in investigations, so they are in no way truly independent.

Anti-Police Power Surrey Event: Organizing Against Policing in Surrey (April 7, 2019)

Anti-Police Power Surrey (APPS) is holding a community discussion on organizing against policing in Surrey. APPS is a group of people living and working in Surrey who oppose the domination of police, police violence and repression, and the wasteful, and wildly disproportionate, expenditure of public resources on policing in Surrey. APPS calls for social resources for communities not cops, for people not police and aims for the development of non-repressive social supports and care.



Details of the event are as follows.



“Community Discussion: Organizing Against Policing in Surrey”

Where: City Centre Library

10350 University Dr, Surrey

Room 418 - Dr. Ambedkar Room

When: Sunday, April 7, 2:00-4:00 pm



Light refreshments will be served

Wheelchair accessible

Families and children welcome



Join us for a community gathering where we'll share some of our experiences and open up a conversation about organizing against police power in Surrey. This is a chance to get to know each other and talk about how we can work together to build a movement that contests the often overwhelming presence of police in our lives and communities.

“The Trailer Park Clearances: Police, Panic, and the State Production of Homelessness”

Jeff Shantz

Policing produces homelessness. An overlooked aspect of homelessness in Metro Vancouver has been the closure of trailer parks (manufactured home parks) and evictions of their residents in Surrey. In the last few years, at least 5 trailer parks have been evicted on King George Boulevard between Whalley and Newton alone—hundreds of people made homeless. Police and bylaw enforcement have propelled these closures and evictions—demonizing and criminalizing residents (for drug use, sex work, etc.), imposing fines to create the grounds for eviction.

Police and bylaw start by harassing people living in the parks, and also harassing some of the park owners. The issues used are staples of police stigmatization and criminalization—they say “well there’s drug trade happening in that park” or “there’s sex work happening in that park” or “sex workers are living in the park.” They use those excuses to ticket people who are then faced with eviction. Owners are pushed to close the parks. The result is gentrification as the former parks become development sites for higher end condos and town houses that the evicted cannot afford to move into.

Ahead of the eviction of the Town and Country RV Park on King George Boulevard Jas Rehal, manager of bylaw and licensing in Surrey, was open about the targeting of residents for activities like drug use and sex work. He stated: “The primary concern is … the hotbed of crime that’s happening in that trailer park, illegal activity and the complete refusal to work with us. Rehal named that so-called “criminal activity as a “combination of drugs and prostitution.” He also said the RV park repeatedly stands in violation of a number of bylaws and fire codes, and hosts “a lot of junk on the property they refuse to clean up.”

According to Cpl. Scotty Schuman of the RCMP, police have identified the property as a “high-risk location.”

In his view, “That’s somewhere where public safety is constantly an issue,” adding that drug-trafficking—allegedly involving methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana is a problem for the cops and that “several warrants” were executed at the property over the course of year. That simply confirms that the RCMP have repeatedly targeted the park

Adds Rehal: “We cannot support keeping this business operating—it’s causing too much of a negative situation in the neighbourhood. The owner is not doing what the owner needs to do to make it safe…we were left with no other option.” But closing the parks does not hurt the owners who sell the lands.

The people who really have no other option are the residents who have been evicted. This is policing created homelessness. It is another example of police serving the interests of businesses and developers, not the public safety of poor, working class people.

The police and bylaw work to evict people from lower cost housing that is then gentrified making huge profits for developers, landowners, and even the former park owners who make millions on the sales. And police and bylaw can use the “work” they have done against the parks to justify a need for increased budgets. The only ones who lose out are the residents. Even those who are “re-housed” lose their connection to home, community, friends, and lose their autonomy and independence.

More Sex Workers and Fewer Bigoted Cops: Real Public Safety

When talking about public safety it is important to define what we mean by safety and safety for whom. The interests, and “safety,” of some (businesses, boards of trade, police, for example) are not the same as the interests and safety of others (street involved people, poor people, the working classes, for example). Yet those distinct interests are rarely laid out openly and honestly and the particular preferences and priorities of powerholders (posed as stakeholders) are presented as, taken for granted as, the legitimate interests of all.

Sometimes, when speaking to an audience they assume to be uniformly made up of powerholders (businesses, board of trade members, police) will put their assumptions and priorities—their biases—on display. Such a moment happened at a recent Surrey Board of Trade public discussion, “Hot Topic Dialogue: RCMP or Municipal Force in Surrey” on January 29, 2019. During the question and answer period, a high ranking RCMP officer Fraser MacCrae, Assistant Commissioner (rtd.) and Former Officer in Charge of the Surrey Detachment, made an incredibly stigmatizing remark about how Surrey Centre (the area in Whalley around Central City Mall) has gotten better because there used to be street level sex workers there, and now they are all gone.

“All gone.” We can think about those words in a context of the murders and disappearances of sex workers locally and across Canada. We can think about this is Surrey where sex workers have been beaten and killed over the last few years. RCMP Assistant Commissioner MacCrae (think about that position of authority) said casually and comfortably the sort of demonizing, stigmatizing, disparaging comment that gets sex workers hurt and killed. This, coming from a top ranking cop tells us plenty about how cops view specific, less privileged, members of our communities. It shows too why police do not contribute to public safety, but rather to the safety of specific, more privileged. Interests. He said this, remember, to a Surrey Board of Trade audience, and none of them called him out on it. It is taken for granted by that crowd. It underlies their assumptions about value, and valuable life, in our society.

If this is the RCMP’s view of public safety and what represents a safer community (the literal disappearance of sex workers)—spoiler alert, it is—then they can keep it (take it with them when they get out of our communities. This should tell us a lot about RCMP violence against women (externally and internally) and about their notorious actions in relation to cases of missing and murdered woman, many of whom are or have been sex workers.

We need to say loudly and clearly that Surrey is better off with more sex workers, working class members of our community, and fewer bigoted and stigmatizing cops. Supporting sex workers, and defending them against stigmatizers and abusers, like the RCMP, would be real contribution to public (not business and police) safety in Surrey.

Oppose the Surrey Board of Trade’s Promotion of Policing in Surrey. Jan. 29.

Anti-Police Power Surrey calls on people to come out to challenge the Surrey Board to Trade’s framing of policing options in Surrey as either RCMP or a municipal force. Meet at 7: 00 AM at Civic Plaza, outside the Civic Hotel, 13475 Central Avenue, Surrey.

We do not need more or different police in Surrey. We need more community resources, supports, and services. And not police.

On January 29, 2019, the SBT is holding a “Dialogue” event on “RCMP or Municipal Force.” The event description says:

“Participate in the Surrey Hot Topic Dialogue to learn more about:

What would have better outcomes regarding public safety

The costs and benefits of a municipal police force

The costs and benefits of keeping the RCMP

Business impacts on such a change”

This is framed entirely within a policing, and business, framework rather than a framework of community supports, funding, and services. We know that in Surrey funds for police mean cuts and/or underfunding of needed community resources and services, as the recent cuts to community centers, art spaces, and an Indigenous gathering place in the new budget show.

The pro-police bias is evident in the list of panelists. They include an Assistant Commissioner of the RCMP and two Chief Constables (Vancouver and West Vancouver forces) long with a police friendly instructor from KPU. From the SBT event page:

Panelists for the January 29 RCMP dialogue are:

Fraser MacRae, former Assistant Commissioner of the Surrey RCMP

Kash Heed, former MLA and Chief Constable of West Vancouver P.D.

Bob Rolls, former Deputy Chief Constable of Vancouver Police Department

Mike Larsen, Kwantlen Polytechnic University Criminology Department Chair

Show up and let them know that we need more community resources, not more cops and cop funding.

“Challenging Police Power in Surrey: A Discussion”

Jeff Shantz

On Saturday, January 26, 2019, Anti-Police Power Surrey (APPS) held a roundtable discussion on police domination in Surrey and community organizing to challenge police power in our communities. The event, “Challenging Police Power,” took place at the Progressive Education Center in Newton on the invitation of the East Indian Defence Committee. About 60 people turned out to discuss impacts of policing, how police uphold systems of racism, oppression, and exploitation, and ways to create alternatives to policing that actually develop and sustain community care and service.

Speakers highlighted a range of issues, including the infiltration of police into postsecondary campuses in Surrey, including their using Kwantlen Polytechnic University as a recruitment center for police and for intelligence gathering (snitch networks) against our communities; cops in schools and gang panics; the criminalization of youth and blaming of parents for structural inequalities; the targeting of homeless people on behalf of business interests; and the involvement of police in community groups as means to gain new resources and further surveil populations.

Almost everyone in the room spoke up to discuss their negative experiences with police in Surrey and to give detail to the oppressive and exploitative nature of policing in Surrey, and in class divided societies more broadly.

Many ideas were put forward for alternatives, including but not limited to community spaces for youth free from cops, health care resources free from police, real supports for parents that do not guilt trip them into becoming snitches on the children to cops while still addressing concerns they might have about their activities, supportive programs for youth after school, and making schools available during non-school hours for youth to use with mentorship.

Jeff Shantz is a full-time faculty member in the Department of Criminology at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey. He is a Surrey resident.

Anti-Police Power Surrey Event: Challenging Police Power in Surrey (Jan. 26, 2019)

Anti-Police Power Surrey (APPS) is holding a roundtable discussion on policing in Surrey, on the need to defund police, and on ways to develop alternatives to police in Surrey. APPS is a group of people living and working in Surrey who oppose the domination of police, police violence and repression, and the wasteful, and wildly disproportionate, expenditure of public resources on policing in Surrey. APPS calls for social resources for communities not cops, for people not police and aims for the development of non-repressive social supports and care.

Details of the event are as follows.

“Challenging Police Power in Surrey”

What: Anti-Police Power Surrey event

When: 2:30-4:30 pm, Saturday, January 26, 2019

Where: Progressive Cultural Centre, #126 – 7536 130th Street, Surrey

In past municipal elections, there has been a lot of attention given to issues of public safety. Focus on shootings, drug operations, and youth involvement in gangs has generated consistent calls for greater public safety, predominantly through more police. The most recent election saw the idea of a municipal police force gain popular support and the new mayor and council moved immediately to start the transition. But police can’t address the root causes of the violence and social tensions that exist; police only uphold through force the social order that produces the violence.

In this political context, Anti-Police Power Surrey (APPS) formed to counter the dominant pro-police narrative and challenge the constantly expanding power of the police in Surrey. At this round table, we will share some of our work and open up a conversation about policing in Surrey. We want to talk together about how we might contest the persistent and often overwhelming presence of police in our communities, explore the sources of social conflicts that are used to justify increasing police resources, and imagine together strategies of community safety without resorting to police.

This event will be held in Surrey, on the traditional territory of the Kwantlen, Qayqayt, Katzie, Kwikwetlem, Semiahmoo and Tsawwassen nations.