P.G. Expected to Sit High on Maclean’s Crime Cities List….Again
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 @ 10:00 AM
Prince George, B.C. – Tomorrow, Maclean’s magazine will release its annual report on the top crime communities in the country, and it is expected Prince George will be near, or at the top of the list, again.
Last year, Maclean’s ranked Prince George as the crime capital of Canada as our crime rate per capita was over and above communities in the nation. In previous years, P.G. has still be in the top ten, hovering in the #4 ranking behind much larger cities of Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Regina.
The issues for Prince George have been primarily the homicide rate, and gang activity. The National Crime Statistics released in the summer, pegged Prince George as number 7 on their list of communities with populations of over 10,000 for having the the most violent crime. Previously Prince George had been number 13. When addressing those numbers, Superintendent Stubbs said " “Nine homicides is a high level for this community, and of course it is a concern. In response to that, that level of homicides, there has been a concerted effort at the detachment level to focus on why those occurred. The overwhelming majority of those homicides involved organized crime, they were targeted, drug related and that’s been the priority of the detachment, to target those people in organized crime who need to be targeted. The efforts are paying off, we are seeing a significant decrease in violence in the community in 2011, however, having said, that there is still a lot of work to do.”
Previous RCMP Superintendents of the local detachment have argued the Maclean’s stats do no reflect the number of crimes being committed by repeat offenders, or that the majority of homicides and serious assaults are happening within the gang community, not impacting the general public.
Later this morning, Mayor Green and RCMP Superintendent Eric Stubbs will detail the latest crime rankings and address media questions.
Comments
“Previous RCMP Superintendents of the local detachment have argued the Maclean’s stats do not reflect the number of crimes being committed by repeat offenders, or that the majority of homicides and serious assaults are happening within the gang community, not impacting the general public.”
Do the cops want asterisks beside the stats? And wouldn’t the same methodology apply for each city in the study?
Lots of contributing factors I’m sure but somewhere in there the effectiveness of the police has to be called into question, too.
Regardless of methodology, it is applied to every other region just the same and we end up on top.
You cant read much into it perhaps because of the methodology, but it still is indicative of issues we experience here in pg in regards to crime and the legal system.
Well, at least some folks are striving to put Prince George on a top ten list…might not be the top ten`s we want to on but…good job.
One of the questions I have is where are the crime for the following TYPES of locations reported not only for this city but also for other cities in relation to their surrounding areas?
1. Crimes which occur within the PG city limits
2. Crimes which occur outside the city limits within the city metropolitan area.
3. Crimes in the remainder of the FFGRD
4. crimes in the communities west of here up to Burns Lake, let us say.
The province is divided up into various regions for various administrative pruposes as well as statistical purposes – health, forestry, environment, tourism, regional governments, federal gov. seats, provincial gov. seats, economic regions, census, and others.
It would be great to see a map which is used to record crimes for comparative purposes so that one could see how regions compare from the point of view of where crimes occur and where they get recorded.
Say someone robs a pub just outside the city limits, is that recorded in the District office and thus does not get attributed to PG?
I just want to make sure that the recording is done for the same boundary that the population count is taken from.
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As far as the police effectiveness goes, waht about the effectiveness of the criminals? If there are more crimes then one could say that:
1. the people may be more effective in reporting it;
2. the criminals are more effective in committing crimes;
3. the criminals are less effective in hiding the crimes they commit;
4. the police are less effective with their crime prevention programs.
So, for the provinces, the highest crime rates are west of the Ontario-Manitoba border. It thus seems to still be the “wild west”.
All of the wild west is dominated by the RCMP, while the tamed east is dominated by non-RCMP police forces.
I remember some 50 or so decades ago that Montreal was the crime capital of Canada.
from an article about post world war 2 Montreal:
“All around, in the 1940s and 1950s, in every aspect of the cityâs lifeâits
economics, its politics, its CRIME, its music, its nightlifeâMontreal pulsed with
energy and life.”
It used to be that port cities attracted major gangster elements. Not sure if that is still true.
Not sure if everyone here heard of the recent Canada-wide raids as a result of a Toronto street gang investigation.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/pre-dawn-raids-close-net-on-national-street-gang-ring/article2269176
It states the following:
âAs the investigation matured, it spread to other jurisdictions, including Windsor, Hamilton, Peel, York, Durham, Ottawa, Renfrew, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Fort McMurray, the Toronto police said in a statement.”
Not sure if it is good or bad that we are not included with such small communities as Renfrew, Fort McMurray and regions such as Durham, Peel and York. If this keeps up, we may be losing our claim to the throne.
All kidding aside, it shows how far reaching the criminal network actually is. Just like WalMart, the criminals have to reach into every nook and cranny of the country to access their victims in order to grow and survive.
So, what crime is home grown such as a murder among relatives and local break and enters due to such things as local poverty, or addiction/substance abuse crimes.
Are we really gonna nit pick here??? COME ON, WE`RE ON A TOP TEN LIST..sheesh.
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