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.