60 days on the job: Surrey police chief looks for smart recruits, high-tech tools in future

Penny Daflos sits down with Chief Norm Lipinski of the Surrey Police Service to discuss his plans for the future.

As he marked 60 days as top cop, Surrey’s police chief laid out a vision for the future that considers major population growth, changes to public expectations of police, and technology that could push boundaries.

Norm Lipinski has been Surrey Police Service chief for some time, but the force become the police agency of jurisdiction on Nov. 30, and he acknowledged that, while they’ve made progress, hiring and other transition plans are nearly a year behind schedule after the mayor challenged the switch on legal grounds, and ultimately failed.

Lipinski has been hiring veteran staff with diverse backgrounds in policing and described the SPS as a “family” with a diversity of opinions and perspectives prompting a bold vision for the future.

“We’ve got a lot of ideas because we got people here with great minds from various agencies,” he said. “We’re going to have body-worn cameras, we’re going to have drones, we’re going to look at facial recognition, we’re going to look at genealogy – all those things – to be a top-tier organization.”

When CTV News suggested facial recognition technology would be controversial, Lipinski emphasized that he’s only interested in applying it to certain suspects and offenders in the most serious cases.

A new type of non-police response?

In the wide-ranging interview, Lipinski revealed he plans to implement a new type of non-uniformed response for situations where conventional officers may not be required.

“I believe in a stratified policing model,” he said. ”That is to say, if you have volunteers, then you have peace officers that are not police officers, but are peace officers, they could do a lot of the low-level calls. Many agencies have that across Canada now. We are going to have that.”

When asked what his ideal recruit looks like, the chief said he used to think that athletic applicants familiar with team sports were best, but he now recognizes that people who’ve worked in service industries with experience de-escalating tense situations and “are really quick-thinking and smart” are top of his list.

The big picture

It will take two to three years to fully demobilize the RCMP in Surrey, who will continue to respond to calls in the community. In the longer term, Lipinski is very focused on the population growth the city has already seen and is expected to see in the coming years.

When CTV News asked if he supported a regional police force – which every other major metropolitan Canadian city already has – Lipinski said it’s a worthy discussion for policymakers.

“I think it’s very clear that from an efficiency perspective and from policing effectiveness perspective, regional policing has a lot of pluses,” he said, including potential cost savings.

“I think from a community perspective of crime reduction, there is merit in that. Of course, it’s extremely complicated and there needs to be a lot of political will.”