Winnipeg’s violent crime severity reaches highest level since 2009
Total crime jumped by 25.6 per cent compared to 2021.
The Winnipeg Police Service’s annual report is out and confirms what many people may have perceived anecdotally — crime was high in 2022.
Total crime jumped by 25.6 per cent compared to 2021 and violent crime severity reached its highest level since 2009. While that is a cause for concern, it’s worth contextualizing these statistics. When compared to pre-pandemic, total crime returned to its upward trend.
In fact, if we compare 2019 to 2022, there is only a four per cent increase in violent crime. Between 2017-19 there was a reported increase of about 10 per cent in total crime, WPS data analyst David Bowman told reporters Tuesday morning. In 2020 and 2021, Winnipeg saw a decrease of 10 per cent and eight per cent in total crime.
WPS Chief Danny Smyth is concerned about the jump in the numbers but he’s been around for a long time and has seen plenty of ebbs and flows. Smyth said things in the 1990s were a lot worse than they are these days.
While it’s important to put numbers into perspective, it would be foolish to completely disregard the COVID19 pandemic, which rocked society. Smyth said it was difficult to gauge what was going on in the community in the midst of the pandemic.
“Some of the trends have continued on where they were going, pre-pandemic, although there’s still some impact that I think the pandemic teaches us,” Smyth said in a phone interview. “The strain in mental health in the community, the opioid crisis some of those things are overlapping and exacerbating the environment a little bit, too.”
Winnipeg broke an unfortunate record in 2022 with 53 homicides but other violent crimes were up as well. A concerning number is the 960 sexual assaults, which is a 21.1 per cent increase from 2021.
With all the hoopla around bail reform in Canada, Winnipeg police were able to ascertain that one in five people accused of a violent crime involved a person violating their bail, probation or similar court order.