MOOOSE JAW — Police Chief Rick Bourassa is pushing back against a “narrative” that has arisen online suggesting Moose Jaw is a crime-ridden community and is pointing out that the statistics disprove those rumours.
The Board of Police Commissioners received the September crime statistics during its Oct. 9 meeting, with the data showing that total crimes against people had declined year-over-year by 1.6 per cent and total crimes against property had declined 27 per cent.
“That (decline) is consistent with what we have been seeing for a number of years and what’s happened in other jurisdictions,” Bourassa said.
“(It) runs counter to the narrative that some people are presenting that crime is out of control and on the rise. That is not the case,” he continued, emphasizing the last three words.
Meanwhile, he noted that year-over-year calls for service had increased 4.7 per cent, with 75 per cent of those calls not crime-related. Therefore, he said police attend six times more incidents that are non-criminal than are.
“Some people do confuse some of the disruption and disorder pieces with crime and that is not the case at all … . We do know from our Community Perceptions Survey that most crime is reported to us,” Bourassa said.
Meanwhile, with crimes that residents don’t report to police, people say they didn’t call because the offences were “much too minor” in nature, he continued.
“I continue to see in that online world this narrative that crime is out of control and that we have to get tough on crime and all these things. I don’t know what ‘get tough on crime’ means,” Bourassa remarked. “We deal with things as they arise, but I think it’s really important that we continue to counter that narrative of the rise in crime — that’s not the case.”
Residents are making more demands on the police for services because they are feeling less safe, which has been increasing for several years, he said. Meanwhile, the data has shown that overall crime rates have decreased 25 per cent during the past 20 years.
“The data are really clear: the narrative is misleading, it’s disinformation (and) misinformation and so I will continue to speak about the facts and not about the narrative that some people feel the need to present without any factual basis,” Bourassa added.
During a media scrum afterward, the chief said he was not sure why overall crime numbers had declined year-over-year, but thought it was good news. Yet, one reason could be that police have worked extensively on reducing property crimes by making their presence more known than before in certain areas.
Bourassa was also unsure why some people perceive that there is an increase in crime in Moose Jaw. While online narratives suggest crime is rampant, he reiterated that neither the data nor the community survey shows that.
However, he acknowledged that people’s fear is real, while their perceptions can affect their viewpoints. This means officers must work to make people feel safer.
“I am certainly not happy to see those narratives not based on fact at all carry some weight and influence people,” the chief added. “But what I encourage people to do is trust their daily experiences and make their decisions based on the data (from relevant agencies) and the lived experience.”
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