The New Westminster Police Department is willing to change up the information it provides to the police board if it helps paint a better picture of the crime situation in the city.
At each police board meeting, the NWPD provides statistics about certain crime categories, including the number of incidents in a month, a three-year average for and year-to-date total of those crimes. The report includes categories such as homicides, assaults, robbery, break and enter, thefts, collisions, and missing persons.
At its April meeting, the police board received the crime statistics report for January, February and March 2023. That reports prompted questions from some members of the board.
Alejandro Diaz, a new member of the police board attending his first meeting, questioned how New Westminster’s crime statistics compare to similarly sized cities in the region.
Jansen said the police department doesn’t compare its statistics to other communities, but it could provide that information if that’s something the board wants to receive. He said those comparisons can be “challenging” because New Westminster is unique.
“New West is so unique with our downtown core. There’s a bunch of uniqueness to our community – in a good way, but it makes it really difficult to compare to other communities,” he said. “That’s why we try to compare ourselves to other years, looking at the three-year average or the five-year average, or even a 10-year average.”
Jansen said there is a standardized way police departments collect statistics and how they’re fed into Canada’s Crime Severity Index.
According to Statistics Canada, the Crime Severity Index has been developed for measuring police-reported crime in cities across the country. It’s designed to track changes in the severity of police-reported crime from year to year, considering both the numbers of particular crimes and the seriousness of a crime in comparison to other crimes.
“We could certainly bring that report back show where we sit locally,” Jansen said. “We’ve done some analysis of where we sit within our neighbours, where we sit within municipal police departments, and then where we sit in the province.”
Jansen said the statistical information that the police department provides to the board each month is based on what has been requested by previous police boards.
“A lot of you are relatively new to the board, so if there’s different data you want to see, let us know,” he said. “Because, obviously, these aren’t all, the only ones (statistics) that we track.”
Jansen said the police department will report back on New Westminster’s Crime Severity Index at the next police board meeting, as that may provide some additional context for the board.
