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.

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.

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.

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.