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!”
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 (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.
