Thefts of vehicles are up — but thefts from vehicles are down. Break and enters to businesses are down— but break and enters to residences are up.
Those are some of the findings in the most recent crime statistics presented to the New Westminster police board. The statistics reflect incidents from January to October 2022.
According to the report, there were 520 “total monitored persons offences” between January and October 2022, which was down four per cent from the 539 incidents in 2021. Some of the crimes in that category include: sexual assaults (up four per cent — 51 cases in 2022 and 49 cases in 2021); common assault (down six per cent — 273 cases in 2022 and 290 in 2021); assault with a weapon – up one per cent — 141 in 2022 and 139 in 2021); aggravated assault (down 33 per cent – four incidents in 2022 and six in 2021); and robbery — down two per cent — 49 in 2022 and 50 in 2021.)
The category also includes homicide, which was down 100 per cent. There were no homicides in New West in the first 10 months of 2022, but there were four homicides between January and October 2021.
The two incidents of attempted homicide reported in 2022 is up 100 per cent from 2021, when one case was reported.
Statistics from the New Westminster Police Department show that domestic violence was down five per cent (500 in 2021 and 477 in 2022) and family violence was down 10 per cent (223 in 2021 and 200 in 2022).
The 52 offences recorded in the Weapons category between January and October 2022 was 22 per cent fewer than the 67 incidents recorded in the same time last year.
In the first 10 months of this year, 1,639 “total monitored property offences” were recorded in New Westminster, which is a 12 per cent drop from the 1,852 incidents in 2021.
Property offences includes break and enters to business (down 38 per cent — 188 in 2021 and 116 in 2022); break and enter to residences (up 26 per cent — 42 in 2021 and 53 in 2022); theft of vehicle (up 14 per cent — 102 in 2021 to 116 in 2022); and theft from vehicle (down 22 per cent — 686 in 2021 to 535 in 2022.)
Other areas where property offences have dropped is mischief over $5,000 (down 22 per cent — 448 in 2021 and 398 in 2022).
On the traffic front, the number of total collision offences is up 19 per cent (434 incidents in 2021 compared to 517 in 2022). Collisions with non-fatal injuries are down 20 per cent (76 in 2022, compared to 95 in 2021), while “collisions – all others” is up 29 per cent (339 in 2021 compared to 439 in 2022).
Impaired offences included a 37 per cent drop in 24 hour suspensions (down from 51 in 2021 to 32 in 2022). Statistics also showed a 33 per cent increase in immediate roadside prohibition warnings (56 in 2022, compared to 42 last year) and a 31 per cent increase to impaired operation of a motor vehicle (drugs and alcohol) — with 124 incidents in 2022 compared to 95 in 2021.
Deputy Chief Paul Hyland said the New Westminster Police Department supplies the monthly statistics to the board as “snapshots in time” for some specific identified call types that the department actively monitors for analytics purposes, such as where and when to best deploy its resources. He noted that not all police call categories are covered in the monthly crime statistics report.
“For a better overall picture of crime in the community, we also rely on the Crime Severity Index (CSI) report produced annually by Statistics Canada,” he told the Record. “For context, the overall CSI for New Westminster was 88 in 2021, up from 82 (+6.7%) in 2020. Violent crime CSI also increased from 80 to 102 (+27.7%) while non-violent crime dropped slightly to 82.7 from 83.2 (-0.5%).”
According to Hyland, the overall 2021 CSI average was 92.9 for British Columbia and was 73.7 nationally.
“Our CSI has been trending upwards for the last five years,” he said.
A report from Statistics Canada states that the Crime Severity Index enables Canadians to track changes in the severity of police-reported crime from year to year. It does so by taking into account not only the change in volume of a particular crime, but also the relative seriousness of that crime in comparison to other crimes
Statistics Canada data shows that New Westminster’s CSI was 88.04 in 2021, which was higher than the 82.48 in 2020 and the 91.51 in 2019. It’s considerably higher than the 76.15 in 2018 and the 71.43 in 2017.
“Related to this, we have also seen increased challenges to our non-emergency services provided by E-Comm,” Hyland said. “As an example, through to the end of September 2022, approximately 10,000 out of 17,000 non-emergency calls in New Westminster were abandoned. There is no doubt that many of those 10,000 calls would have resulted in a police investigation, and the lack of this data surely is affecting our statistics.”
In the past year, the police department has warned about the accuracy of some statistics given issues with the E-Comm non-emergency line. In response to lengthy waits on the non-emergency line, some residents and businesses have reported hanging up rather than being staying on the line.
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