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.