January homicide-free after a year that set record for killings

After a record-breaking year that saw two homicides on the last day of 2011, Edmonton has recorded no homicides throughout the first month of 2012.

Last year, the city recorded 47 homicides, shattering the previous high of 39 set in 2005. As of the afternoon of Jan. 31, Edmonton police had no new murders to investigate. By this time last year, there had been four homicides.

“Usually, you can’t tell if this is a long-term trend for five or 10 years,” Michael Gulayets, a criminologist at Grant Macewan University, said of 2011’s homicide rate. “We can’t say that yet. It might just have been a bad-luck year.”

In 2011, the city’s first homicide victim, 23-year-old Mohamed Jama, died three hours into New Year’s Day when he was shot in the lobby of a downtown nightclub. A man found dead in a Mill Woods home in the early morning hours of New Year’s Eve and a woman found dead 12 hours later in a bloody downtown apartment were the last victims of the year.

Nearly 10 per cent of the homicides in 2011 were not typical killings, Gulayets said, which inflated the statistics.

Three were prison killings, and two victims were shot by police. Two more were homicides from previous years that were included in 2011’s statistics.

Gulayets said it could take years to determine the long-term impact of the police department’s violence reduction strategy, but it may already be helping to reduce the killings.

“These kinds of programs never hurt,” he said. The violence reduction strategy, launched in August, focuses on some of the social fac-

I don’t think Edmontonians want to accept that we’re a city that has about 45 murders annually.

Coun. Kerry Diotte

tors that contribute to crime, such as distressed neighbourhoods and alcohol and drugs.

The homicide rate for any given year is extremely to difficult to predict or explain. “Maybe 2012 will be our lucky year,” Gulayets said.

A homicide-free January may mean Edmonton has started to trend down from a high crime period that can be influenced by everything from demographics to the weather, said Michael Kempa, an associate professor of criminology with the University of Ottawa

“I’d say it’s always a good sign, and hopefully it’s a start of a long-term trend,” he said.

There have been two homicides in Calgary this January. Ottawa and Winnipeg have each seen one homicide this year.

Mayor Stephen Mandel said the violence-reduction strategy introduced last summer might be showing results.

“I think the plan put forward by the police and the city in co-operation with Reach Edmonton is a long-term plan, but it will have short-term implications,” Mandel said. “I think we’re seeing some (effects), but I think there are far more to come down the road.”

Coun. Kerry Diotte called the absence of homicides so far in 2012 “great news.”

“It also shows, hopefully, if the trend continues, that last year was a bit of an aberration, which is doubly good news. I don’t think Edmontonians want to accept that we’re a city that has about 45 murders annually.”

The longest homicide-free stretch the city saw in 2011 lasted six weeks, from mid-october to the end of November.

Edmonton police would not comment specifically about the murderfree month.

“The homicide detectives continue to work on files from last year and historical cases,” wrote police spokeswoman Noreen Remutulla in an email.