B.C. crime rates fall to 30-year low

Offences drop eight per cent from 2006 to 2007


Catherine Rolfsen, Canwest News Service

Published: Wednesday, August 27, 2008

VANCOUVER -- The reported crime rate in B.C. is at a 30-year low, according to statistics announced yesterday by the provincial government.

A recent report from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics -- a body that collects crime numbers from police forces across the country -- shows an overall decrease in crime rates of eight per cent between 2006 and 2007. This trend is mirrored across Canada.

Statistics like that generally reflect those compiled by the Victoria Police Department, said Const. Lori Beauvais, media spokeswoman.

Beat and bike officers, who patrol city streets, say they've noticed an anecdotal drop in street-level disturbance and disorderly conduct calls, she said.

"They're not quite sure why or the cause," she said.

Thefts from vehicles, and theft of vehicles, also appear to have dropped in frequency, she said.

However, as the B.C. report notes, drug crimes remain a dominant problem in the city.

"We'd be safe to say we're not seeing a reduction of drug crime here in Victoria," said Beauvais.

Much of the overall decrease in B.C. can be attributed to drops in high-volume, non-violent crimes like theft, motor vehicle theft, fraud and counterfeiting.

By comparison, B.C.'s drug crime rates -- which have consistently been the highest in Canada since the 1980s --increased in 2007, due largely to a spike in possession of cannabis offences.

And the overall rate of violent crime declined only marginally between 2006 and 2007.

In 2007, police reported 88 homicides across the province, while 68 were reported in 2006. The number of attempted murders increased to 106 from 88 over the same period.

In the long term, according to the report, the violent crime rate is at a 20-year low.

But the numbers in the report may not reflect the actual instances of crime in our communities, said Neil Boyd, the associate director of Simon Fraser University's criminology department.

"[For] all the really serious kinds of crime, they're very reliable, because that all tends to get reported," he said. "[For] property crime and drug crime, the police reported data are not terribly reliable, because of differences in reporting rates, and with drug crime, changes in enforcement strategies."

Boyd also said changes in a population's demographics can affect rates of violent crime.

But Solicitor General and Public Safety Minister John van Dongen said he thinks the provincial government's expenditures on crime-fighting initiatives like the bait car program, civil forfeiture legislation and better access to information for police likely have had some impact on statistics.

He said organized crime remains a worry for the province.

Cpl. Dale Carr of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team said that while the numbers of potential murders investigated by the force remained steady at 43 between 2006 and 2007, so far this year, the team already has 44 cases.

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