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A memorial to honour beating victim Julie Paskall is seen outside the Newton Arena in Surrey, B.C., on Jan. 5, 2014.Darryl Dyck/The Globe and Mail

Surrey's majority party on city council has released a crime-fighting plan affirming the need for more Mounties and a secure mental-health facility – even as its mayoral candidate acknowledges a consistent decline in the overall crime rate of the quickly growing city.

But Linda Hepner, the mayoral candidate for the Surrey First party, says city government has to act to ensure that members of the public feel safe despite the numbers.

"Our [crime] numbers have gone down since 2008, but that isn't the message that is being perpetuated, either by residents or by media. People don't feel that," Ms. Hepner said in an interview on Wednesday as Surrey First released a $21-million crime-fighting program financed from fees for secondary suites in houses and electronic signage, as well as a dividend from the city's development corporation.

"I think it's important that not only is [Surrey] a safe city, but everyone feels like we are a safe city," Ms. Hepner said. "Whether it's reality or perception, crime is at the top of everyone's mind and there isn't any politician running who doesn't want to see Surrey as a safe city."

Ms. Hepner, who is seeking to succeed departing Surrey First Mayor Dianne Watts, noted that Surrey faces particular crime-management challenges that include a large population of younger people and a vast geographical area.

A city-commissioned report by Irwin Cohen, who holds the RCMP Research Chair at the criminology and criminal justice school at the University of the Fraser Valley, suggested the overall crime rate of B.C.'s second-largest city has "consistently" declined in recent years.

However, the report, released earlier this week, supported adding Mounties to Surrey's RCMP detachment to ease the overall police workload and allow for pro-active policing to increase public safety. Safety in Surrey has become an issue due to such crimes as the slaying of hockey mom Julie Paskall outside a hockey arena in December, 2013, as well as the apparently random slaying of 17-year-old Serena Vermeersch last month. Suspects have been arrested in both cases.

The Surrey First platform affirms the need to add about 150 officers to Surrey's RCMP detachment, and Ms. Hepner said she would like to see as many officers as possible who have roots in the community southeast of Vancouver. "It would be really heartwarming to see them come back to the neighbourhoods they know and have grown up in," she said.

Surrey First also proposes to work with the provincial government to build a secure mental-health facility in Surrey, possibly as a wing of Surrey Memorial Hospital, with about 20-plus beds. Such a measure, Ms. Hepner said, would help free up police, who now have to deal with mental-health patients.

Surrey First is supportive of a specialized court such as a community court, but waiting for the outcome of a review on the matter by the Ministry of the Attorney General. The plan also calls for expanded closed-circuit video surveillance of areas of high crime and a renewed effort to work with the province on managing prolific offenders.

As the platform was released, it came under fire from the two other leading candidates in the mayoral race.

Barinder Rasode said Surrey First had waited too long to tackle rising crime in the city – a jab that prompted Ms. Hepner to note that Ms. Rasode was a chair of the city's police committee but did nothing to advance cutting-edge ideas to manage crime.

In response, Ms. Rasode, a former Surrey First councillor who broke with the party, said she did the best she could working with Surrey First councillors, but left the party to sit as an independent due to a failure to acknowledge crime problems.

Doug McCallum, a former Surrey mayor seeking to regain office, said the plan was coming too late. "All of a sudden a month before an election, they wake up. While everyone was waiting, our communities were deteriorating as far as public safety is concerned."

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