Break and enters, thefts drive up crime rate in city
Police chief blames slow economy and powerful drugs such as fentanyl
Increased crime in Calgary is more than just a statistic for store owner John Sanford, who needs surgery after he was pistol-whipped during an attempted robbery in January.
He says he still lives in fear of his store getting targeted for future robberies, and business is suffering as a result.
“We’ve closed down our hours, so we’re down about 40 per cent (on sales) of what we were doing before,” said Sanford, co-owner of Rocky Mountain Pawn on 4108 Macleod Trail. “We used to be open late, and now we’re not anymore.”
Sanford’s comments come as Statistic Canada’s Crime Severity Index (or CSI), released on Wednesday, shows that a growing number of thefts — including robberies and stolen cars — has pushed the city’s crime rate to its highest level since 2009.
Calgary reported the largest increase in its CSI value last year, at 29 per cent, of any municipality across the country. Crime in the city had dropped for 11 consecutive years before jumping 29.4 per cent in 2015.
Calgary police chief Roger Chaffin attributed the crime numbers to a struggling provincial economy and the prevalence of highly addictive drugs such as fentanyl and methamphetamine.
“As long as you have powerful addiction in this community, as long as that addict community rises, crime trends will move with it, and we simply have to find broader solutions to this,” he told reporters.
He added that the addictions are “pervasive” across all areas of the city and various age groups.
“It’s not a pocket of the city we can say here are where all your addicts are — they’re everywhere,” he said.
Alberta also recorded the largest provincial increase in its CSI last year, with an 18 per cent jump.
The higher CSI in Alberta was mainly the result of more incidents of breaking and entering, car theft and theft of $5,000 and under, Statistics Canada said in a report.
Nationally, police-reported crime increased in 2015 for the first time in 12 years.
While Calgary’s CSI rose the most in 2015, its index value of 78.3 is just 8.6 points above the national average. It remains well below Saskatoon, which has a CSI of 112.5, the highest in the country.
According to crime statistics in Calgary, the number of robberies increased from 954 in 2014 to 1,183 in 2015. Incidents of break and enter rose from 5,852 in 2014 to 9,168 in 2015. Motor vehicle thefts jumped from 4,499 in 2014 to 7,684 last year, and incidents of theft under $5,000 rose from 20,774 to 28,464.
Mayor Naheed Nenshi said while Calgary’s overall crime rate remains quite low from a longterm perspective, there has been a “striking increase” in break and enters and theft.
“I was interested to see that our rates of violent crime seem to be well under control, and I think our police service have done a really good job on that,” Nenshi said.
“The increase in theft and particularly break and enter continues to be concerning to everyone.”
Chaffin said police are already seeing some changes in crime trends this year.
“These are the crime trends that tend to affect public confidence,” he said. “These are the things that affect us everyday. It affects us, it affects our neighbours, it’s the sort of things that deteriorate your confidence in community life. So as a service we’ve reorganized ourselves, we’ve put new strategies in focus to these crimes, and already in this year we’re seeing downturns in most of those crime trends.”
Meanwhile, at Rocky Mountain Pawn, Sanford says he’s glad that they haven’t had any incidents since the attempted robbery in January, but rising crime rates cause worry for the future.