Surrey mayor hammered over Lipinski firing court petition<\/p>\n
Published 4:54 pm Monday, September 28, 2026<\/p>\n
Surrey Mayor Brenda Locke is taking a drubbing by her political rivals after former Surrey police chief filed a petition in B.C. Supreme Court on Monday asking the court to overturn his firing, with the October 17 election less than three weeks away.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis action is against the police board so I have nothing to say about it, it has nothing to do with me or the City,\u201d Locke told the Now-Leader late Monday in response to Lipinski v. Surrey Police Board.<\/p>\n
The former chief constable of the Surrey Police Service was fired by the police board on June 1. \u201cOn my first day back from vacation, I was called into a meeting with the Police Board and informed that my employment was being terminated without cause,\u201d he wrote to SPS members.<\/p>\n
Cheney Cloke, formerly vice-chairwoman of the Surrey Police Board and now a Safe Surrey Coalition candidate for council called on Locke to resign as mayor and withdraw from the October 17 election.<\/p>\n
Surrey First mayoral candidate Linda Annis charged that the police board cancelled this month\u2019s public meeting \u201cbecause they wanted to duck tough questions before the election. At the same time, there is a very real concern that Brenda Locke\u2019s handpicked board may be looking to hire a new police chief before the October 17 election. This very serious court case should give the board cause to put the brakes on any hiring until the case is heard and decided.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s time to end the lack of transparency and political interference,\u201d Annis said in a press release. \u201cWhen it comes to policing and public safety, Surrey voters deserve a mayor who will fight the criminals, not our police service.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mike Starchuk, mayoral candidate for Imagine Surrey, charged that a police chief \u201cshould never have to keep the mayor happy to keep his job. This October, put out the fire at City Hall and elect a team that will let Surrey\u2019s police do their job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Troy Van Vliet, mayoral candidate for the SurreyNOW slate \u2013 not affiliated with this publication \u2013 stated in a press release that public safety \u201cshould never be a political weapon, not for those in office and not for those running for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe claims filed in court raise serious questions, and they deserve serious answers,\u201d he said. \u201cBut those answers will come from evidence in a courtroom, not from ultimatums and press releases. Surrey has had enough theatre. Grandstanding doesn\u2019t make a single family safer. What this city needs right now is a steady hand.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Surrey mayor hammered over Lipinski firing court petition Published 4:54 pm Monday, September 28, 2026 Surrey Mayor Brenda…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":913951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-913950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}