Fewer homicides in 2024 not evidence of trend, Winnipeg criminologist says

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/01/2025 (248 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There was little remaining evidence of the assault that took the life of Bryon Frederick Moose the day after he was left badly injured in a back lane behind Maginot Arena, apart from a pair of latex gloves and bandage packaging missed in the cleanup after paramedics left the scene.

The 50-year-old man originally from O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation died in hospital last Friday, hours after he’d been beaten in the lane behind Dugas Street near De Bourmont Avenue early that morning, marking Winnipeg’s 37th homicide of 2024 — the first year since 2018 that fewer than 40 people were slain in the city.

In 2018, 22 people were killed. The number doubled to a record 44 in 2019. In both 2020 and 2021, 43 people were slain. The number spiked to a record 53 in 2022, and dropped to 42 in 2023.

The reduced number during the past year does not, however, serve as an indication of any sort of trend, University of Manitoba criminal justice professor Frank Cormier said.

Homicides tend to be random in nature and difficult to predict, he said.

“This most recent fluctuation underlines the point that criminologists and social scientists make all the time, that we shouldn’t read too deeply into these numbers, with the usual caveats that one person killed is one too many, and that whatever number more in a given year is very serious, but it underlines the fact that these things go up and down without any identifiable reason behind it,” Cormier said.

“It’s not a reason to panic and it’s also not, when the numbers go down, to somehow say that things are better this year somehow, because there hasn’t been any great change in our society (in 2024) compared to (2023). Really, these things are attributable to just sort of random fluctuation.”

Cormier said he suspects the high numbers in 2020 and the years since have been influenced by the negative socio-economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, including lost work, increased isolation and increased substance abuse.

Cormier noted Winnipeg has a high homicide rate overall despite fluctuations, which is largely driven by known factors.

“In Winnipeg, certainly, one of the greatest drivers are people who live in very desperate circumstances, their lives are precarious, they don’t have stable employment, they’re not in stable family situations, they’re using drugs and alcohol to excess, they might be addicted to those substances,” he said. “And then, what might be ordinary events in many people’s lives, can spark someone to kill another person.”

Cormier said calculated and intentional killings, which tend to be driven by gang activity in Winnipeg, are much rarer than those committed in the spur of the moment.

“Once again, it’s people in precarious circumstances that turn to crime as a way of life,” he said, referring to gangs. “For a lot of young people, a gang can provide, in the short term, food and clothing and shelter and support and protection.”

He said society knows what can be done to address those factors that drive the city’s high homicide rate.

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“When we look at the antecedents, the things that are going on in a person’s life leading up to them committing a homicide of some sort, then the answer becomes fairly obvious — the things that they don’t have, we need to be better at providing those and, by the same token, the negative influences in their lives, we need to try to remove those things.

“It’s getting to younger people before they get involved with criminal peers, it’s trying to make sure fewer people grow up in dysfunctional, dangerous families… it’s providing the same means to things like education and satisfying and stable employment to all people equally.”

But, he added, it’s a matter of “having the will to actually do something about it.”

The Winnipeg Police Service includes the 2023 deaths of two infants in their internal homicide statistics for 2024, because that’s when arrests were made.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Erik Pindera
Reporter

Erik Pindera is a reporter for the Free Press, mostly focusing on crime and justice. The born-and-bred Winnipegger attended Red River College Polytechnic, wrote for the community newspaper in Kenora, Ont. and reported on television and radio in Winnipeg before joining the Free Press in 2020.  Read more about Erik.

Every piece of reporting Erik produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.