Drugs blamed for rise in crime severity

Violent crime rate up 19.78% in 2019 compared to the previous year

Peterborough Police Chief Scott Gilbert says the city has a problem with “ruthless” drug dealers from the GTA coming to here to “victimize” people — and it’s increasing the rate of violent crime locally.

“It’s unfortunate — we have a number of marginalized people who are being taken advantage of by some pretty ruthless people from the GTA,” he said.

The rate of violent crime in Peterborough increased by 19.78 per cent in 2019 compared to 2018 according to Statistics Canada, the police board heard on Tuesday. That puts Peterborough in 18th place out of 45 Ontario cities large and small (Timmins and Thunder Bay are in first and second place respectively, for the highest rates of violent crime; Toronto is in seventh place).

Police board member Les Kariunas noted that Peterborough’s18th place finish is a “jump up” of 10 spots in a year.

“I find that very disconcerting,” Kariunas said.

Gilbert said officers are seeing increasing numbers of GTA criminals coming here to sell drugs — and sometimes they end up robbing local people in the process.

In 2019, police seized 49 guns total, Gilbert said, whereas by Oct. 7 this year that number had already reached 82. Some of those are given to police for safe disposal when someone dies, but other guns are being seized, Gilbert said, in local crimes related to the GTA’s drug trade. It’s especially disturbing to see guns being seized from kids, Gilbert added.

“When you’re arresting a 14-year-old youth armed with a loaded .22-calibre

pistol, with an extra magazine for it — that’s a problem,” he said.

Mayor Diane Therrien, a member of the police board, said it’s useful to zero in on similar-sized cities included in Statistics Canada data to better understand where Peterborough stands in terms of violent crime. Cities such as Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury have higher rates of violent crime in the statistics, for example, while Timmins is in first place.

Therrien said the rate at which city police solve crimes (the clearance rate) is ninth out of 45 cities — and that compares well to some other, similar-sized communities (Guelph is in 24th place for its clearance rate, for example, and Kingston is in 31st place).

“So there’s a lot of good work happening,” Therrien said. “We always have work to do, but the clearance rate is quite high, especially when you compare it to those similar-sized cities and services.”