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Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke says her city is “doing everything” in its authority to address the wave of extortions and shootings, including upgrading more than 600 traffic cameras and facilitating “immediate access” to them for Surrey police.
A police spokesperson said this week when the Surrey Police Service replaced the RCMP in late 2024 as police of jurisdiction, police access to the cameras ended and was only reinstated in the past couple of weeks.
In the interim, it had to make office-hour requests to Surrey’s traffic management centre for recorded footage, said Staff Sgt. Lindsey Houghton.
“The process required a city employee to access, download, and send the footage to SPS, resulting in critical time delays, particularly after hours.”
As of Dec. 31, 2025, some police staff working in 911 dispatch were granted direct access to the cameras’s feeds for urgent police requests during non-business hours. And in the weeks since, more staff have been granted access.
Houghton said what police can access under the new system is no different from what Surrey RCMP were able to access, and the footage is the same as what firefighters and city engineering staff can access.
The cameras have a couple of seconds of delay, said Houghton, but can be used to support “live” criminal investigations, including tracking a suspect’s movements or determining which direction a suspect’s vehicle fled, which could help police determine where to deploy officers or advise the public about which roads to avoid.
They can also be used in cases of serious collisions to help 911 dispatchers guide police and fire crews on the best route to access the scene.
However, the majority of police requests to access the cameras is for archived footage, said Houghton. The footage could provide information about a vehicle’s whereabouts, if it went through a particular intersection or route, and can be used as evidence in court.
In a statement Friday, Surrey City Manager Rob Costanzo said that when the RCMP were the police of jurisdiction, all civilian staff supporting RCMP operations were city employees and only city employees are permitted to access footage, he said. When SPS took over in November 2024, those civilian employees became SPS employees and, thus, were no longer authorized to access the city camera system.
“That change was driven entirely by provincial privacy legislation — not by any city decision to restrict access.”
After the transition, SPS officers “continued to obtain footage by contacting city staff, exactly as had occurred previously under the RCMP model,” Costanzo said. “City records show that SPS made approximately 1,400 requests for camera footage in 2025, with the majority of requests initiated, on average, seven days after an incident occurred. Otherwise, roughly 90 per cent of requests received by city staff were initiated within the same day or the following day, and when urgent access was required, city staff responded immediately.”
In August, he added, the city introduced an after-hours access procedure through the city’s fire dispatch service, allowing SPS to obtain footage immediately on evenings, weekends, and holidays.
“This interim solution remained in place through Dec. 31, 2025, while the city recruited and trained dedicated staff to provide on-site camera support at SPS headquarters. In late December 2025, SPS formally advised the city, in writing, that it would begin using this new staffing model effective Jan. 1, 2026.”
Coun. Linda Annis, who is also running for mayor in the upcoming election, wants to expand police access to traffic cameras even more, drawing concern and criticism from some.
Annis says she wants there to be a 24-7 camera monitoring team and for police to be a part of it to help find and arrest criminals quicker. The Surrey First candidate also wants to ask the province for more cameras throughout Surrey.
A civil liberties advocate told CBC that additional access than what exists would increase the risk of abuse of the system.
“Currently, police do have access to the camera footage … but they need to justify their access to the city on a case-by-case basis,” Tamir Israel, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s privacy, surveillance and technology program.
Extortion-based violence has plagued the Lower Mainland for the past few years. While most reports involve threats by individuals wanting payment, many have escalated to shootings and in two known cases, two people have been injured as a result of the shootings.
Surrey has already had 16 extortions reported so far in 2026 with three of them involving shootings, Surrey Police said. A total of 12 people have been victimized in those extortion cases, with 10 of them having been threatened before in another extortion attempt.
On Sunday, a home in Cloverdale was targeted for the second time in a shots-fired incident police believe to be linked to extortion.
Extortion-related shootings continued, with The Bhojan Sweets and Restaurant in Newton hit with bullets on Wednesday. The following day, a home and vehicle in Panorama Ridge were sprayed with bullets in what police also believe to be linked to extortion threats.
No one was injured in any of these shootings.
“For more than a year, extortions and more recent gang-related violence have impacted far too many in our community. Everyone deserves to feel safe in their neighbourhoods, and residents want to know that these crimes are being addressed quickly and forcefully,” Locke said in a statement Thursday.
Last year, Locke introduced a $250,000 reward fund. She also asked the provincial and federal governments to provide Surrey an additional 150 police officers to deal with the issue.
The neighbouring city of Delta has also experienced extortion cases this year. Delta Police are investigating seven extortion cases that originated in the city, said Staff Sgt. Mike Whiteley.
They are also involved in investigating five extortions that were reported in other jurisdictions, but the victims live in Delta.
Three of those 12 cases Delta police are involved in involved shootings, but no one was injured.
Several extortion groups have been established to tackle investigations and land charges. The RCMP has set up both a national co-ordination and support team and a B.C. extortion task force, while both Abbotsford and Surrey police have their own local task forces.
“There are more police in Surrey right now than there have ever been. The RCMP has surged resources into the community,” Premier David Eby said during his current trade trip to India.
“But bluntly, we need better results, we need to see more arrests.”
Arrests have been slow to come in B.C., with only about six individuals charged with extortion last year and some have also been deported, according to Canada Border Services Agency.
Eby also spoke briefly on India’s Bishnoi gang claiming responsibility for some of the extortion shootings in Surrey, saying they are “at least tangentially involved in extortion in Surrey, perhaps directly involved, and they should be held accountable for that.”
With files from Kim Bolan, Alec Lazenby, Tiffany Crawford and Cheryl Chan