It was a little confusing to listen to the politicians talk about the need for more police in Surrey during the lead-up to last year's municipal election.
Particularly since it sounded like these people were convinced a few more cops wandering around will prevent crimes that are currently happening from never coming to pass.
But maybe I see the police a little differently from most people. I don't think of the police as an agency which prevents crimes so much as I see it as one which mops up the aftermath. They find the criminals, they recommend charges to the province, they go back out and find more criminals.
It doesn't really matter if Surrey has 800 or 8,000 cops, the crime rate should have little bearing on their presence.
Think about the murders of 2014 in Surrey and tell me how more police would have prevented them?
Would more police have prevented Baldev Singh Kalsi or Harbans Pandher from allegedly killing their wives?
What about 15-year-old Dario Bartoli being swarmed by a group of teens in South Surrey? Are we banking on the idea a beat cop would have been driving by the park at 2:30 a.m. that night?
How can more police prevent a mother, who may or may not be suffering from a mental illness, from allegedly killing her eight-year-old daughter?
The answer is you can't expect more officers to pick up the pieces of a discarded society. The problems the police are dealing with all began years before the crimes happened.
It's about children growing up in low-income housing and poverty. It's about a punitive judicial system that crushes drug addicts instead of trying to find them help. It's about a city that tears down a makeshift homeless camp without offering them a permanent shelter and a new start to a low point in their lives.
It's about a province that chronically underfunds mental health research and offers little in the way of outreach for the mentally ill. The police, untrained in matters of mental health, wind up trying to tackle these problems on their own.
Often the consequences are shattering. Naverone Woods, shot at a Surrey Safeway over Christmas, is one such example.
It's about social programs for children and families to offer a sense of belonging to the community in which they live so that people grow up to care about others around them. It's about being accountable to society with the understanding that there are reciprocal benefits.
It's wonderful Surrey can boast about having low property taxes and low municipal spending.
Not so wonderful when you see where that low tax rate and low spending rate gets you. A city where only 13 per cent of the residents feel "safe" where they live.
It's not enough to say, well, I live in South Surrey, so I'm safe. Two of the murders in December took place south of Highway 10.
Besides, it shouldn't be about whether you and your family are the ones who are safe. Crime against one person hurts everybody with a trickledown effect that harms Surrey socially, economically and even culturally. After all, it's hard to sell tourists on a reason to visit this place if we can't even sell ourselves.
Talk is cheap, hiring police is expensive, but the meaningful change really happens where everything begins. In our families, our neighbourhoods and our communities.
Adrian MacNair is a staff reporter with the Now.
Email amacnair@thenownewspaper.com.