RCMP commander amazed by city’s spirit
Assistant Commissioner Fraser Macrae has led the detachment for the past eight years, but will retire June 1
After working a week of 15- hour days, Surrey RCMP Assistant Commissioner Fraser Macrae, the commanding officer of Canada’s largest detachment, looks forward to Friday nights.
That’s when he gets together with his garage band and rocks out playing his Gibson goldtop Les Paul guitar, singing Neil Young’s Rockin’ in the Free World.
The band’s name is Drink the Fat.
“We couldn’t think of anything better,” Macrae explained in a recent interview.
“We like to say we can’t change the name now because we’d lose our fan base,” he jokes, adding his band rarely plays in public, except for the occasional charity gig.
The band plays classic rock from the ’ 60s and ’ 70s. “Cream, a little bit of Clapton, Neil Young. People who hear us play say, ‘ Can’t play anything since 1974?’,” he says, laughing.
“I’m not leaving my day job to become a full- time musician,” he points out.
Macrae is, however, leaving his day job on June 1, when he retires after 35 years with the force.
“It will be nice to only have an obligation to my family and myself,” he said.
He wants to do some travelling with his wife of 34 years, Debbie, his high school sweetheart.
The couple has two adult sons and a daughter, one grandchild and another on the way.
He also wants to dust off his golf clubs, which haven’t seen much action in recent years because of the demands of the job, and plans to get back playing with his hockey team, which he hasn’t done in five years.
Macrae was born in Ottawa and grew up in Regina, where his father was the RCMP superintendent in charge of training young recruits.
Macrae, 56, joined the force on Oct. 29, 1976. He was sworn in by his father.
His brother also followed in his father’s footsteps and now is a staff- sergeant at the RCMP training depot, in charge of the academic program.
Macrae was the commanding officer of Maple Ridge before taking the job eight years ago as commanding officer of the Surrey detachment, which is twice as big as any other detachment in Canada, with 661 Mounties and 275 support staff.
He was amazed at the size of Surrey when he took on the job.
“It is such a unique community, communities,” Macrae said, noting Surrey is growing at a rate of more than 1,000 people a month — about 75,000 residents in the last five years — and its population now is almost 500,000, just behind Vancouver’s 603,000 residents.
“It also has the largest youth population in the province and the largest school population,” he added.
“It has been the greatest challenge of my career but also the most rewarding,” he said of his years in Surrey.
The nature of crime has changed since he first took the reins of Surrey’s force in 2004.
Prosecutions of crime have become much more complex, often taking many years to get through the court system, he said, and the nature of gang crime has changed dramatically.
“The high- profile emergence of gangs and the criminal activity related to gangs, including homicides, is certainly something we’ve all experienced commencing in ’ 05 and ’ 06 and continues to this day,” he said.
“There were homicides before but they didn’t have a public statement attached to them.”
In the past, gang members would settle disputes and a gangster would simply disappear, never to be seen again, but now gang members are more likely to kill each other in brazen public executions to intimidate other gang members, Macrae said.
“They are more apt not to consider collateral damage.”
The worst case, he said, was the Surrey Six murders, in which four gang members were executed in a Surrey apartment and two innocent people were also fatally shot in October 2007. The case still hasn’t gone to trial.
“It was one of the worst days, the single most traumatic incident — and that’s understating it — during my time here,” Macrae says of the murders, the worst in B. C. gang history.
“The wholesale type of execution was just offensive to everyone,” he said. “It was so outside of our previous experience that it really was a very difficult time.”
The Surrey Six murders affected public opinion, he added.
“It really commenced a groundswell of dissatisfaction with the state of affairs and provided a platform for people to say, ‘ There needs to be greater consequence,’” MacRae said.
The tragedy also galvanized Surrey residents who wanted to help make positive changes.
“People in Surrey really care about their community.”
“I have been amazed by the community spirit in this city. Every part of this city, and every community within this city, has positive- minded people who want to make a difference and they work hard … All you have to do is reach out to those people and they will work beside you, shoulder to shoulder, to try to improve the livability in the community and the quality of life.”
Macrae also credited Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts for being a “tremendous leader” with vision for the city’s future who has been able to bring people together.
Watts recognizes that police alone can’t solve crime problems, but there needs to be a coordinated effort to reach sustainable solutions, he said.
“I’ve been blessed by having an opportunity to work with tremendous men and women, and I’ve made great friendships,” he said of his Surrey years.
Although there has been discussion about a regional police force for Metro Vancouver, Macrae believes the RCMP will continue policing Surrey, as it has done for the last 60 years.
There likely will be more integrated police teams, he said, adding he feels the force will overcome the incidents in recent years that have undermined public confidence in the RCMP.
He feels the new commanding officer of the RCMP in B. C., Assistant Commissioner Craig Callens, “is the right person at the right time” to deal with internal and external issues, and similarly feels the new national commanding officer, Commissioner Bob Paulson, a former B. C. Mountie, is an excellent choice to lead the force into the future.
No decision has yet been made on a replacement for Macrae.