Sex-trade surge pushes up severity of crime in city

Other factors in rise included jumps in meth trafficking, break and enters

A surge in sex-trade related offences helped drive up the overall severity of Edmonton crime last year, causing city police to again miss a crime-reduction target.

Police recorded a 371 per cent increase in obtaining sexual services for consideration offences last year, a report to the Edmonton Police Commission presented Thursday said.

Deputy chief Greg Preston said police are beginning to refocus on sex-trade enforcement in the wake of a 2013 Supreme Court of Canada ruling on prostitution laws — which explains part of the increase.

“As a result of the Supreme Court decision, there was some uncertainty in relation to what exactly the law was,” Preston said.

Because of that, police dialed back sex-trade enforcement to wait for clarity on the new law, he said.

Federal legislation introduced in 2014 explicitly outlawed the buying of sex, but not its sale.

“Once it was cleared up, we were able to then go back to enforcement,” Preston said.

Last year, police arrested dozens of johns in multiple stings — including two that each resulted in 26 arrests. One month-long investigation alone led to 38 arrests on obtaining sexual services charges.

Preston said police have had to adapt to the increasingly online sex trade.

“We have to do it online and so it’s more about us posing typically as the sex-trade worker and having the johns come to us,” he said.

The increase in sex-trade charges contributed to an overall increase in the city’s crime severity.

Like other police services, Edmonton police track crime on the Crime Severity Index. The index, established by Statistics Canada, assigns weights to certain offences and factors in population to create a measure of the overall severity of crime.

City council earlier set a target crime severity of 86 or lower, an eight-point reduction from 2013 levels.

Crime severity declined from 2009 to 2011, but has risen in each of the last six years. Last year, Edmonton’s crime severity index score rose to 124.6, up 4.8 per cent from the year before.

In addition to the spike in sextrade offences, the increase was driven by upticks in break and enters (up 11 per cent), failure to comply with an order (24 per cent), fraud (seven per cent) and dangerous vehicle operation evading police (36 per cent).

Police also saw a 40 per cent increase in crystal meth trafficking offences last year.

A decrease in cocaine trafficking (down 38 per cent), discharging a firearm with intent (58 per cent) and weapons possession charges prevented Edmonton’s crime severity from rising even further.