Twenty-Two Firearm Charges, Four Surrey Shootings: Eby’s Safety Promises Meet the Docket
Surrey families are reading about alleged targeted shootings, firearm-prohibition counts and remand. Victoria owes them measurable results, not another slogan about safer communities.
Surrey Police Service issued a September 11 update that should cut through every soft-focus public-safety talking point coming out of Victoria. Police say Criminal Code charges have been sworn against Marco Matias, 37, following two separate Surrey Police Service and RCMP Surrey Provincial Operations Support Unit investigations into a series of alleged shootings in December 2025 and August 2026.
The first file is not a vague neighbourhood fear. Police say officers responded to reports of shootings at the same Guildford-area residence near 110 Avenue and 140 Street on December 7, December 27 and December 28, 2025. They describe the second and third incidents as targeted shootings. On August 24, 2026, the BC Prosecution Service approved 12 charges related to those December incidents: three counts each of reckless firearm discharge, unauthorized firearm possession, unauthorized firearm possession in a motor vehicle, and possessing a firearm contrary to an order.
The second file is from Cloverdale. Police say that on August 12, officers responded to a shooting outside a residence near 60 Avenue and 177 Street, where two people were shot at and one sustained minor injuries. On September 4, the BC Prosecution Service approved 10 more charges connected to that incident, including firearm-discharge counts, aggravated assault, loaded prohibited or restricted firearm possession, and possessing a firearm while prohibited. Police say Matias has been remanded until a scheduled September 16 court appearance.
No responsible person should use a charge list as a conviction. The accused is presumed innocent unless the Crown proves its case. But the public-safety question for David Eby’s NDP is not whether politicians can prejudge a criminal file. They cannot. The question is whether Surrey residents are getting the level of prevention, enforcement, prosecution capacity and supervision they were promised.
The province’s own public-safety page says B.C. is working on enforcement, housing, health and justice to make communities safer, and says repeat-violent-offender hubs include Surrey. It also says more than 400 repeat violent offenders are being monitored and that B.C. is hiring more police officers. Those are the government’s claims. Now put them beside the local reality: one Surrey update, four alleged shootings, 22 approved charges, and another neighbourhood asking what “safer” means on the ground.
Surrey does not need Victoria to attack judges, frontline officers or Crown counsel. It needs a transparent results ledger: firearm-charge timelines, remand and release outcomes, prosecution resources, prohibited-weapon enforcement, and whether provincial repeat-offender programs are actually reducing shootings in Surrey’s neighbourhoods. If the NDP wants credit for a safer-communities plan, it should show Surrey the receipts.