City's crime severity ranking "marginally changed"

Prince George RCMP Supt. Warren Brown is taking the city's latest Statistics Canada ranking for crime severity for the city in stride.

According to results issued late last week, the city moved up one place in the rankings to 20th, out of 305 communities accounted for in the survey.

"I don't ever want to go backwards," Brown said. "Our CSI standings really are very marginally changed. We're always around number 20."

The outcome remains a marked improvement from where the city stood from 2009 to 2012, when it ranked as high as 12 one year, and 14th in the other three. In 2008, the city was 20th ranked.

Looking strictly at violent crimes, the city moved up seven spots to 20th from the year before.

Much of the difference appears to be due to the number of homicides. In 2015 there were three recorded within city limits and one just outside compared to none in 2014.

As for non-violent crime, Prince George moved up two spots to 19th.

Brown said that could come down to a single prolific offender being out of jail for an extended period. He's optimistic that ranking will improve as the effects of a program RCMP is running in conjunction with Nothern Health to deal with offenders with mental health issues takes hold.

The detachment conducts its own crime analysis and is aware of the trends in various types of offences.

"It doesn't really surprise me when the CSI says 'here's where you stand,' because at any given time, I can tell you where I stand," Brown said. "We're also monitored by our district here in the north and by our E division [B.C. RCMP] crime analysts.

"So, for instance, if we see an increase in mischief by 35 per cent, the RCMP will say 'hey, Prince George RCMP detachment, why are we seeing a marked increase?'

"Or marked decrease. If we see a 40-per-cent decrease, they want to know what crime initiative we're using. We're trying to learn from best practices as well."

Statcan takes police-reported incidents for the year, assigns a weighted value to each of them based on their severity and then takes total population into account to work up a score which is then used to rank the communities.