After a three-year run as Canada’s most violent city, according to annual federal statistics, Thompson has improved marginally to be only the country’s second most violent city.
North Battleford, SK, is now Canada’s most violent city.
Statistics Canada’s Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR2) Survey for last year shows a decrease for Thompson in the Violent Crime Severity Index led by a decrease in the number of reported incidents of second-degree murder; manslaughter; aggravated assault and assault with a weapon or assault causing bodily harm incidents.
No second-degree murder incidents were reported in Thompson, last year, compared to two in 2012. There were also no manslaughter incidents last year compared to one in 2012.
Aggravated assault incidents dropped by 70 per cent – from 20 in 2012 – to six last year. Assault with a weapon or assault causing bodily harm incidents declined by almost 14.4 per cent from 139 in 2012 to 119 last year.
Cocaine trafficking incidents dropped by almost 21.3 per cent from 47 in 2012 to 37 last year.
Dawn Sands, communications officer for the City of Thompson, said in a July 24 media release the Statistics Canada data shows the “overall crime severity value saw a 13 per cent drop since 2012. Specifically, the violent crime severity value realized a 32.2 per cent drop and the non-violent crime severity value a 3.4 per cent drop, giving us the lowest values in 10 years.”
The City of Thompson attributes the drop in crime severity in 2013 “to our ongoing downtown strategy and the allocation of resources to community-driven crime reduction initiatives such as coordination with the local RCMP detachment, Project Northern Doorway and retaining a public safety manager to oversee the bylaw enforcement personnel and the Downtown Ambassadors Program,” Sands said.
“I’m pleased, although not surprised, to see that our strategic investments and initiatives are showing positive results,” stated Mayor Tim Johnston in the same release. “Addressing crime and safety takes a co-ordinated approach and Thompson has become a leader in community collaboration; our results speak for themselves,” added Deputy Mayor Dennis Fenske, who chairs the public safety committee.
Moving forward, the City of Thompson will prioritize the areas most affecting Thompson’s crime severity value and ranking, Sands said, in particular in the areas of drugs and gangs, domestic violence and substance abuse. “A new strategy to achieve this is a partnership with the province and the RCMP to develop the community safety officer pilot program to support our ongoing efforts.”
North Battleford topped both the most violent and overall crime categories in the annual Juristat Crime Severity Index report released by Statistics Canada Wednesday. North Battleford had the dubious distinction of again topping the Overall Crime Severity Index for the fifth year in a row. Thompson for a fourth consecutive year finished second in the Overall Crime Severity Index.
Statistics Canada released its annual Juristat Crime Severity Index values for 304 police services policing communities over 10,000 population, 2013 on July 23.
To facilitate comparisons among geographic areas as well as over time, police-reported crime has traditionally been expressed as a rate per 100,000 population.
“The traditional crime rate provides information on the number of police-reported incidents that have occurred for a given population. It measures the volume of crime coming to the attention of the police. The rate is simply a count of all criminal incidents reported to and by police divided by the population of interest,” says Statistics Canada in Measuring Crime in Canada: Introducing the Crime Severity Index and Improvements to the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey, a 43-page explanatory document published in 2009.
“Each criminal incident, regardless of the type or seriousness of the offense, counts the same in the rate. For example, one homicide counts the same as one act of mischief.”
