Double the Amount of Bylaw Officers in the Community

Rationale

There City of Surrey currently employs approximately 24 bylaw officers.

Currently there are four main areas that City of Surrey by-law officers are engaged in:

• Animal Control
• Business Licensing
• Parking & Commercial Vehicle Enforcement
• Property Use

Uniformed bylaw officers have the capability to provide an extra set of eyes and ears across Surrey’s 6 districts.

Proposal

24 new uniformed bylaw officers will be hired to be in the community as a supplemental support system for the RCMP, serving to:

• Deter street level crime through increased public presence
• Increase public confidence in neighbourhood safety
• Report criminal activity in real time

The new bylaw officers will have strict guidelines not to engage with any criminal activity, and will have absolutely no policing powers.

They will simply add an additional presence in high-occurrence crime areas across the five districts of Surrey.

While the new bylaw officers will act in a support role, their deployment will be completely under the control of the City of Surrey and accountable directly to the Mayor.