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 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.

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 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.”