FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, MONDAY MARCH 16, 2026, Surrey BC — I spent 32 years as a Surrey firefighter. When the alarm sounds, you don’t form a committee. You don’t wait for a study. You rely on preparation, grab your gear … you get on the truck, and you go to work. That’s what’s missing from City Hall’s response to the extortion crisis: urgency and the strategic preparation to act. 

The numbers are staggering. Forty-four extortion cases under investigation. Twenty-seven involving shootings. Active investigations have surged from 10 to 26 in the past year alone, and we’re already on pace for dozens more incidents in 2026. Business owners in Newton are paying protection money. Families in Fleetwood are afraid to open their front doors. Shots are being fired into homes, at restaurants, at people’s livelihoods. 

And what has City Hall done? Where is the Mayor’s Surrey Emergency Plan? Where is the task force, what are they up to, and how many members are they? The Community Advisory Group has yet to meet with Crown Counsel or the CBSA? Where is the press conference with police leadership laying out a coordinated strategy of partnership and progress, and asking the public for help? At every council meeting there is a standing agenda item – the Mayor’s Report — yet nothing is being addressed here. 

Silence. That’s what families are getting. Silence, while their neighbours are being terrorized. 

Public safety is something you simply cannot politicize. I’m writing this because I believe the Mayor has the power to act right now – today – and she should. Mayor Locke doesn’t need to wait for the election, like all that waiting from last summer to late-November. She can convene an emergency meeting of Council. She can direct the City Manager to stand up a coordinated response. She can hold COVID-style briefings every week, and pick up the phone to RCMP, CSIS, and BC’s Solicitor General and demand joint operations. She can do all of this today; she always could. Instead, the action she’s taking is to cut our policing budget out of spite, through a compromised and debilitated Surrey Police Board. 

Mayor Locke: if you won’t, I will. 

Last week, Imagine Surrey released our detailed anti-extortion plan because Surrey’s families deserve to know that someone is taking this with urgent seriousness. It starts with a coordinated command, on the ground in our city, bringing together SPS, RCMP and CSIS – not to chase individual incidents, but to dismantle the networks behind them. We will hire 12 new intelligence officers to the federally supported Extortion Task Force, specialized in organized crime and financial flows, because you don’t stop extortion by arresting the person who collects the envelope. You stop it by following the money and taking down the people at the top. 

We will deploy helicopter patrols over targeted neighbourhoods, run blanket overnight roadside checks in high-risk areas, and launch trusted, protected public reporting tools so victims know where to turn for help. We will name and photograph charged suspects publicly – because extortionists thrive in the dark, and sunlight is a powerful deterrent. And we will push the federal government on the international networks that fund and direct these operations from abroad. 

None of this is theoretical. These are the kinds of co-ordinated, multi-agency operations that have broken extortion rings in other cities. What they require is political will – a Mayor who treats this like the emergency it is – who isn’t overwhelmed or overrun in the face of proactive provincial and federal leadership – and puts every available resource behind stopping it. 

Beyond extortion, our plan will invest in hundreds of new police officers by 2030, dozens of crime-prevention cameras by 2028, 50+ new firefighters, and dedicated mental health crisis- response teams that pair clinicians with first responders. We will complete the police transition by the end of 2028 and end the uncertainty that has hung over this city for far too long. 

I know what it means to run toward danger. I did it for three decades. The people who do that work – your firefighters, your police officers, your paramedics – they don’t ask for speeches or once-per-month updates. They ask for backup. They ask for equipment. They ask for leadership that has their back every day and week. 

That’s what I am offering Surrey. Not more talk or politics about public safety – a plan to deliver it. Not more studies – action. Not more finger-pointing between levels of government – a Mayor who picks up the phone and gets it done. 

To the business owners who are scared to open their shops in the morning: we see you. To the families who flinch at every loud noise: we hear you. To the South Asian community that has borne the worst of this crisis with courage and dignity: we stand with you. 

This is not a problem for the next election cycle. It is a five-alarm fire, and it’s burning right now. Mayor Locke, I am asking you respectfully: sound the alarm. Use the power you have. And if you won’t, know that Imagine Surrey is ready to do the job on day one. 

Mike Starchuk, March 2026

Mike is a retired Surrey firefighter with 32 years of service, a former Surrey City Councillor, and former MLA for Surrey–Cloverdale. He is running for Mayor of Surrey with Imagine Surrey in the 2026 municipal election.