The Surrey Police Service will eventually manage policing in the city via a “precinct” model.
Precincts were one of several initiatives SPS Chief Norm Lipinski chatted about Feb. 18 at the Cloverdale District Chamber of Commerce monthly luncheon. Lipinski was the guest speaker at the event, held at Elements Casino on the Cloverdale Fairgrounds.
Lipinski told the Cloverdale Reporter the idea was spawned through the community feedback process and driven by demographics, crime stats, and both the amount of calls and the types of calls the police respond to in different neighbourhoods.
“We looked at it, and it's very clear there’s got to be a differentiation [across the city],” Lipniski said. “With the community-policing philosophy, I want to have one person in that area. So in Cloverdale, for example, they can go to that one person. That person, that inspector, will be available to give updates on what is going on in Cloverdale.”
He said he’s “excited” about rolling out the precincts. Each will follow Surrey’s six communities: Cloverdale, Fleetwood, Guildford, Newton, South Surrey, and Whalley. Each one will be headed by an inspector, and that inspector will liaise with community leaders and citizens.
90 DAYS IN
Nearly three months since the SPS became the police of jurisdiction in the city, Lipinski said the changeover has been “very smooth.” He said he was “very pleased” with the way the initial handover went and how things have rolled out over the last 90 days.
Prior to the changeover, the SPS sat down with the Surrey Mounties to look at the workload city-wide. They found about 50 per cent of the workload was spread over two precincts, Whalley and Newton.
“It made sense that we, the Surrey Police Service, took over all the community programs throughout the city,” Lipinski noted.
For policing, the two forces split the city geographically.
“We took over the left side of the city and the RCMP took over the right side,” Lipinski explained. “It’s a very simple way of explaining it, but the Surrey meaning is we took over Whalley and Newton and they took over South Surrey, Cloverdale, and Guildford.”
Lipinski said the SPS plans to take over half of South Surrey by July or August with the entirety to follow a month or two after that. They plan to be in Cloverdale by the end of the year or early 2026 at the latest.
The inspectors appointed as officer in charge of each precinct will be brought up to speed on the needs of each area so they hit the ground running when the SPS takes over each new zone from the RCMP.
Lipinski also said they’ll be adding more and more officers while they ramp up.
“There are two streams that we hire,” he explained. “One is brand new recruits that go to the Justice Institute of B.C. They are very energetic 21-year-olds—mostly from Surrey. Number 2 is the experienced officers, which we get from all across Canada.”
Lipinski said the SPS has a lot of officers with many years of experience, noting their average seniority on the front line is nine years.
“That’s pretty good,” he added. “Normally, it’s about four or five years, and with experience, in my view, comes good judgment.”
He said there are 28 different police agencies represented among SPS members, too.
TRANSITION 'TAKES A BIT OF TIME'
Lipinski also talked about the transition being a complicated exercise and not something as simple as one force moving out and another moving in.
"It takes a bit of time," he said. "How long? We feel three years. We'd like to do it quicker than that. We'd love to do it in two years, but we feel we can do this in under three years—complete the entire transition."
Lipinski also touched on the SPS's policing model. He said the SPS operates on a “community policing” model. He said community wellness encompasses every member of the city no matter their stature.
"I'm a strong advocate that this is a shared responsibility," he explained. "We can't do it all ourselves. I'm a fan of community wellness, not just about law enforcement ... because there's a correlation between community wellness and reduction in crime."
The SPS conducted two city-wide community engagements, one in 2021 and one in 2024, Lipinski added. He said it was pretty clear residents “want to be involved” and “want to be a part of the solution” to the city’s policing puzzle.
"As a result of that, and we looked at the data, and we looked at the five (traditional town centres) here in Surrey, and it really lends itself to having slightly different policing models—think of the demographics, the different businesses, Whalley/Newton vs. South Surrey—there's a bit of difference."
Lipinski said the public engagements revealed two main concerns residents had: 1.) that residents want to see boots on the ground, they want to see police officers in the streets, in parks, at sporting events, and at public events in the city, and 2.) that residents are very concerned about the provincial gang conflict; they want to feel safe walking in their community at night.
TIERED POLICING
Lipinski said the other big initiative he’s spearheading is a “tiered-policing" model.
Lipinski envisions two extra groups of people working together with the SPS to bring his vision of community policing to Surrey.
"Policing is expensive,"Lipinski said. "It's typically one of the larger budget areas of any council."
He said because of that, he needs to be smarter about how he deploys policing resources. As such, he wants to build a big base of volunteers and also wants to hire community safety officers, or CSOs, to transform the way policing works in Surrey. He said CSOs would be new to the city, but not the Lower Mainland, as Vancouver already employs them.
"(CSOs) don't have the same training or pay or equipment as regular police officers, but they can do a lot of things that you don't need a full-on, trained police officer to do," explained Lipinski. "Such as investigating collisions and traffic accidents and many other small things of that nature. We gotta take ... all those calls off the table (and give them to) somebody that's more suited to do that and doesn't cost as much money and leave the policing for the areas where you need a bona fide police officer."
BODY-WORN CAMERAS, DRONES COMING
Lipinski also said new tech is coming to the SPS. He said in multiple surveys the SPS has conducted, 90 per cent of respondents have been in favour of body-worn cameras for both transparency and accountability. He said the SPS is looking at running a pilot project of about 20 body-worn cameras, which could start as early as September.
"I'm a big fan of that," he added. "All [police] agencies are slowly going to them."
He also wants to start using drones. He said a lot can be done with them, such as looking for lost people and for monitoring crowd safety at large events.
Lipinski said he also wants to enhance the investigative process for crimes committed in Surrey by using both forensic genealogy to solve cold cases and to use facial recognition for new cases. He said the facial recognition system they will use won't be open source but will be an internal system run by the SPS.
"For threshold serious offences, we would look at using facial recognition," he explained. "Calgary does that already, and they've had some good success with that."
He said it will be combined with other policing processes to act as the starting point for an investigation.
Lipinski said more than anything, he’s excited about the future of policing in Surrey. He said their best resource is their people, and he noted in municipal policing, nearly 90 per cent of new recruits stay on the same force for an average of 25 years.
"You have that longevity, within the organization, connected to the community," he said. "Sure, they're going to move around to different areas of policing, but they're here for a long time and they get to know the community."
