BURST
Surrey’s specialized gang officers that collected intelligence and patrolled bars, restaurants and major events attended by gangsters have all been reassigned.
Postmedia has learned the move took place in January, before the high-profile slaying Jan. 12 of Brothers Keepers gangster Naseem Mohammed , a suspect in other murders when he was killed. Mohammed had been staying in a Panorama Ridge house that was set on fire after he was shot. The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team is investigating.
The nine gang unit officers were sent to work on extortion investigations and have now been assigned to new units as the Surrey Police Service deals with staffing shortages.
Independent MLA Elenore Sturko , a former Surrey RCMP officer, said gang cops are unique in that they come face-to-face with gangsters every day as they do “duties to warn” about possible threats, knock on doors to do curfew checks and collect intelligence while out on pro-active patrols.
Sturko said the specialized officers “have that kind of street intelligence and credibility to do things like bar walks, restaurant checks to make sure that they manage what has been at times throughout the Lower Mainland and in Surrey a really hostile environment with, for example, shootings at locations like restaurants.”
A designated gang unit , with its identifiable vehicles and uniforms, “is extremely important to making sure that the landscape of criminal behaviour in the city is being managed,” Sturko said.
SPS Staff Sgt. Lindsey Houghton said officers have been “temporarily repurposed” from some SPS units, including the gang crime team “based on current operational priorities, including the Cloverdale transition and extortions.
He noted that the SPS’s organized crime team “remains fully operational” and that Surrey continues to have the support of the provincewide Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit .
“Our organized crime team is responsible for identifying and dismantling organized crime groups that pose a threat of harm or violence to the community,” Houghton said, adding that the team is staffed “by over a dozen sworn officers and civilian support staff.”
He said the gang team reassignments may end in July “at which time SPS will have been able to hire and train more experienced officers and our next recruit class will graduate.”
Sturko said with local gang officers “the intelligence gathering is done on a different scale” than it is with CFSEU.
“We need to continue to have also a visible street presence of gang units,” she said.
The SPS is clearly struggling to recruit cops given that it’s offering a $30,000 signing bonus for experienced officers to join the force, Sturko said.
A retired RCMP officer who lives in North Surrey told Postmedia that he called police in mid-March after observing meetings between several suspicious men on his street over several weeks. He said the men would arrive in vehicles before getting out to talk. He said they were not connected to any house on the street, and he didn’t want his name used for security reasons.
After capturing the gatherings on his home camera, he began watching more closely. The former cop, who did transnational drug investigations and then worked for the B.C. Civil Forfeiture Office, made 42 pages of notes, took plate numbers, collected video footage and even did his own surveillance. He provided all of it to police.
The responding officer was polite and professional but told him the SPS didn’t have the resources to investigate. They offered extra patrols in the area.
“As a taxpayer, I’m paying for — these are supposed to be the top dogs — and they’re telling me they don’t have the resources when I’ve done their job for them here,” said the man. “If I was a young beat cop and somebody gave me this kind of intel, I’d be on it.”
Mayoral candidate and Surrey Coun. Linda Annis said she supports the decision to move all the gang officers to extortion investigations given the staffing issues facing the SPS.
“The focus in Surrey around public safety right now has been extortion, and gang violence, touch wood, with the exception of the shooting that we just had has been reasonably quiet,” Annis said Thursday. “I do have confidence that if things started to get messy, that the police chief would redeploy more officers over to focus on the gang activity as well.”
She said Surrey needs to hire another 300 police officers over the long term to adequately serve the city.
“We need to be thinking ahead. How can we fix this problem for future?”
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