Crime rates up across city

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This article was published 25/07/2018 (2922 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Crime is up across the city, according to the Winnipeg Police Service’s 2017 annual statistical report.

“No one wants to hear that crime rates in their community are going up,” Danny Smyth, Winnipeg Police Service chief said in a statement. “Yet for those of us who call Winnipeg home, that is the reality we continue to face.”

City wide, violent crime rose by seven per cent, property crime was up nine per cent, and the rate of drug crimes, which included cannabis-related offenses, had risen 15 per cent. According to the report, the vast majority of those charged with violent crimes, property crimes, and drug related offences are adult males. 

“This is due in large part to the growing use of methamphetamine and the pattern of violence associated with the illicit drug trade that has begun to grip Winnipeg in ways we didn’t think possible only a few short years ago,” Smyth said.

The report claims that a third of all homicides in 2017 are drug related, with a spike in meth related drug offenses across the board.

In the River East area — which includes Elmwood, East and North Kildonan — 899 violent crimes were reported in 2017. While that number was 12.5 per cent higher than the five year average between 2012 and 2016, it was 1.7 per cent lower than the 915 reported cases of violent crime in 2016. Property crime, however, had increased by five percent, from 3,141 cases in 2016 to 3,297 in 2017, a 12.3 per cent increase over the five-year average.  

Trevor Siwak, a volunteer with the North Kildonan Community Watch, said that his group has observed a similar trend since they started tracking incidents of property crime and vandalism in the area last spring.

“In general, we feel nuisance crime has gone down” he said. “But it’s also important to note that a lot of the offences listed don’t happen in the street against random residents, and as a group incidents on the street or that originate on the street are what we watch for.”

Meanwhile, there were 63 drug related offenses in the River East area in 2017, three more than in 2016. However, that number was 10 per cent less than the five-year average.

In Transcona, 216 violent crimes were reported in 2017, down from 230 in 2016, which was only 4.3 per cent more than the five-year average. Similarly, property crime was down from 1,460 incidents in 2016 to 1,373 in 2017, which was 4.3 per cent higher than the five-year average. Drug crimes were also down 31.3 per cent from 2016 (16) to 2017 (11) and 39.6 per cent compared to the five-year average.

Sheldon Birnie
Managing editor

Sheldon Birnie is the managing editor of the Free Press Community Review. Email him at sheldon.birnie@freepress.mb.ca or call him at 204-697-7112

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