Langley Township and Langley City have shared an RCMP detachment for decades, but in 2023 the Township signalled the beginning of the end of that partnership.
In May, the Township council voted to de-integrated the Langley RCMP into two detachments.
The vote followed years of on-and-off wrangling between the two communities over whether each side was paying its fair share for local policing.
The issue, from the Township’s point of view, is that there are far fewer calls for RCMP services in its part of the community than in the City.
“We are investing in public safety and the City of Langley is not,” Township Mayor Eric Woodward said in a statement issued after the results of the in camera vote were announced in May. “It is not fair to Township of Langley residents and taxpayers to have to subsidize policing in another municipality. We need to make a change.”
Woodward said the process will take place in two stages.
First, the Township announced its withdrawal from the cost-sharing agreement with the City, which can be ended on 24 months notice.
The other stage is getting provincial approval for the de-integration into two detachments.
Unlike the long and messy saga of Surrey’s switch from RCMP to a civic police force, neither City nor Township has expressed interest in ditching the RCMP.
When the announcement was made in the spring, the Langley RCMP detachment was funded for 210 officers, and the Township had been adding more, faster, than the City had. But there were an average of 173 officers in the detachment, thanks to an ongoing RCMP shortage across the country, along with leaves for things like illness, training, and maternity.
The City pays for a quarter of the total complement of the local detachment, but has just 16 per cent of the combined population of the Langleys.
However, it also sees almost 30 per cent of all the violent crimes in Langley take place within its boundaries.
Langley City issued a relatively muted response to the Township’s drive to de-integrate the Langley RCMP, with City Mayor Nathan Pachal noting it would take “many, many years to complete.”
“It’s going to be beyond this term of office,” he said. The current term of office started last fall and lasts four years.