The Surrey Police Board on July 31 heard an "evidence-based" case made for deploying two-officer patrol cars across all parts of the city rather than continue with the current RCMP model of one-officer cars.
"I've got to hit the elephant in the room," Board Administrator Mike Serr remarked. "We've heard a lot about costs, budgets and that is something that's come up a lot with community misunderstanding of this and I also think, obviously the City having some concerns...I just really want to get an understanding of cost implications of two-person cars."
Chief Constable Norm Lipinski replied that "it is our intention that we are not increasing the front line in order to use two-person vehicles and we believe that there's an efficiency gain there.
"We have a lot of priority-one calls, we have a lot of emergency calls that require two persons and it just stands to reason that you would send a two-person car to that instead of one person arriving, waiting for the second one, etcetera," Lipinski said. "For our purposes, going forward, it's not a requirement for us to have more officers on the front line to meet the two-person car commitment."
The SPS is scheduled to replace the Surrey RCMP as the city's police of jurisdiction on Nov. 29.
Lipinski told the meeting that SPS Insp. Ryan Hall was assigned to do research into this "realm" roughly a year ago. Hall did an "historical review" of two-officer-per-car deployments in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere, and also reviewed police calls for service data from 2023.
Hall said efficiency was "obviously" one of the criteria he dealt with. "We want to see how a two-person car could manage risk for officers on the road and for the community that we serve and we want to see how it could enhance culture from one of the reports that we read earlier, several organizations use two-person cars to enhance diversity, equity and inclusion goals."
He said the debate over one-officer versus two-officers per car dates back to the first in-car radios with the premise being that a lone officer could cover a large geographic area. While the New York Police Department has toggled between both models over the years, the Los Angeles Police Department has been "unapologetic" is running two-officer cars since the 1950s. Otherwise, Hall noted, "cash-strapped" cities use one-officer cars. And while studies from 1979 concluded single-officer cars "provided quicker response times, higher visibility and did not affect safety, studies on the matter are generally "outdated, few, and are largely inconclusive."
That said, Hall found, "the results of two-person cars are good for mental health, they're good for socialization and they're good for culture of an organization."
Concerning Surrey's 2023 police data, he learned that approximately 41 per cent of the time two or more officers in two vehicles are dispatched to the same call for service. First and second-priority calls made up roughly 72 per cent of calls in Surrey that "roadable" police officers attended. "Frontline officers attend a serious or urgent emergency call requiring immediate police attention three out of every four files that are dispatched," the inspector discovered. "It can be confidently deduced between one in every three to one in every two calls for service required a two-officer response in Surrey in 2023.
"So the recommendation is that the Surrey Police Service deploy two-person cars," he said, "based on a call type and response requirements and should be in a ratio amount. I think basically what you could take a look at is by the number of cars deployed and the number officers deployed, within existing resources so there's no additional cost – we don't have to hire any more frontline officers, we can do it with existing resources. It certainly doesn't mean that every car has to be a two-person car; we can run a ratio of two-person cars and we can assign them to or dispatch them to the higher-risk calls. We can do this across all parts of the city. We can use it to match the situation and be flexible with our deployments and this is from the 2023 data and from previous research on policing models."
Meantime, the SPS rolled out its first patrol cars on July 2 and Ian MacDonald, spokesman for the SPS, says a total of 30 SPS cars are expected to be patrolling the streets by summer's end, with 10 more on the road by Aug. 6 and another final 10 for this year in early September.
Lipinski echoed this at the July 31 board meeting. "Right now we're situated well and we are moving forward," he said, with Serr adding that "I'm glad to see the cars out, I think that is critically important to get the community to see that the SPS is out there in their own vehicles."
MacDonald told the Now-Leader that he doesn't know if the SPS will flip over to two-officer cars "with that immediacy" on Nov. 29, "but certainly effective that date SPS is in charge of all operational policing for the city. So I would say sometime after that date, yep, you would start to see some – some – two-person vehicles."
Lipinski earlier said getting these cars on the road is an "essential step forward" in the city's policing transition as it's "important for residents to become familiar with the look of their new police service so they will be comfortable approaching SPS vehicles and officers whenever they need help or have questions."
He defended assigning two police officers per patrol car as he took questions from Surrey council members on Sept. 11, 2023, noting that it’s part of the SPS’s collective agreement and every major city police force in Canada has two-officer cars. In contrast, the majority of Surrey Mounties patrol alone, except in training or in some specialized units.
Particularly on a Friday or Saturday night, he said, having two officers in one car is much more efficient because it saves on mileage and gas.
“But more importantly, it is efficient if you go to a dangerous call, and I’ve been there. You go by yourself and you wait for backup. It’s pretty hard to do, to wait for backup, when you hear somebody screaming inside a house. So you go in, and that’s unsafe. There is a place for two-person cars in today’s society in a major city,” he said at the time.
Coun. Rob Stutt, a former Surrey RCMP officer, asked Lipinski, “Are you telling me there’s no backup in Surrey that’s readily available at any given time?”
Lipinski replied there is back-up available but the question is how long it takes and how busy it is on a Friday night. Sometimes the minimum requirement is “barely” met on account of training and officers being off sick, he noted.
“If it happens to be really busy, that particular time when the call comes in, it could be some time before somebody gets there. I don’t know what that time is, but I’m sure there’s lots of anecdotal stories.”
Coun. Harry Bains, again on the two officers per car issue, asked Lipinski at the 2023 meeting if it’s his plan to have fewer patrol cars on the road at any given time.
“It would depend on the shift and the day of the week,” Lipinski replied. “There could be less police cars on the road.”
Meantime, Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke noted after that 2023 meeting that in cases involving a mental health crisis the Surrey RCMP sends Car 67 to the scene, with a Mountie in uniform and a clinical nurse.
“On the other hand, if it’s a situation where there is perhaps violence or trauma happening in a home or in a place that they have to go to, they send two cars, but those two cars don’t necessarily have to stay there the whole time,” she said. “So the RCMP have a method of doing it, they’ve always been able to adapt to that and so I can only say they’ve been very successful, the RCMP’s model has been successful to date.”
The Surrey Police Union on April 25, 2024 issued a press release charging Locke with circulating “misinformation” that two-officer SPS patrol cars will mean increased costs to taxpayers.
“The presence of two officers in patrol cars enhances response times to emergency situations requiring two officers, facilitating quicker interventions and resolution of critical incidents,” SPU spokesman Ryan Buhrig stated in that press release. “This approach prioritizes officer safety and improves outcomes for victims, witnesses, and the public.”
Buhrig noted two-officer cars “means fewer vehicles on the road, not an increase in the number of officers. This consolidation allows for streamlined operations and reduced costs associated with vehicle maintenance, fuel consumption, and overall fleet management.”
Union president Rick Stewart also weighed in, saying Locke’s "assertion two-person patrol cars will increase costs is misleading" and "distracts from the fundamental principle that the same number of officers are deployed in either scenario, ensuring two officers arrive at high-risk calls at the same time.
"In fact, strategic implementation of two-person patrol vehicles enhances service delivery, decreases police use of force, and improves police response times,” Stewart maintained.
