The Edmonton Police Service held a news conference on Wednesday to discuss numbers recently released by the Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics that suggest the crime rate in Alberta’s capital decreased by 11 per cent in 2023 compared to the year before.
“Nationally, the overall police-reported crime rate in Canada went up three per cent,” Ron Anderson, the EPS’ chief innovation and strategy officer, told reporters. “So we have a marked difference between Edmonton and the rest of Canada.
“Having said that, we still have much work to do in the areas of ongoing violent crime which remains a challenge.”
In a news release, Anderson suggested “targeted initiatives that are now properly resourced with EPS members and our partners” played a role in driving down the overall crime rate.
“Initiatives such as the Edmonton Police Foundation’s Community Accelerator program, which applied focused strategies to combat crimes such as liquor store and catalytic converter theft, began to pay dividends in 2023,” he said. “As well, Safer Public Spaces, targeting social disorder and victimization, had an impact in Edmonton’s downtown core and surrounding communities.
“The provincial government’s new Navigation Centre and dedicated LRT deployments are already looking promising throughout the first two quarters of 2024.”
Anderson also said the EPS’ high-risk encampment teams have played an important role in addressing disorder in the city’s core.
However, the violent crime severity index for Edmonton rose by four per cent in the same time period. Anderson said “this is primarily driven in the increase in firearms and weapons.”
“Make no mistake, violent crime continues to be a major concern in our city,” he said. “While we still need to keep our foot on the crime-fighting pedal, we’re beginning to see some tangible traction with some of our targeted initiatives.”
Dan Jones, a retired police officer who is now the chair of justice studies at NorQuest College, said it is important police departments do not say “something caused something when it didn’t” but credited the EPS with providing more than just two years of statistics when explaining why the department’s officials believe certain initiatives have had an effect.
“It would be interesting to dig more into their data to understand exactly how they link the programs and processes that they have to the 11 per cent,” he said. “I’m not saying it’s not there, I’m just saying it would be really neat to see how that played out with some of the programs.”
Anderson said there was a notable increase in the reporting of fraud in 2023 (up by 7.7 per cent since 2022), a trend he noted is evident across much of the country, especially ever since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020.
“We need to be focused on education as well as persistence in targeting individuals perpetrating these events,” he said.
Insp. Tim Horon said it is key for Edmontonians to be educated on the “methods that the fraudsters will use to try to impact our community.”
“We know that is caused millions of dollars of loss every year and impacts almost everyone in our community,” he said. “Why is this up? I think that the tools, the technology that is being used is profound.”
Horon said police try to work with partners in the tech sector to keep up with new fraud techniques used by criminals but stressed educating citizens about the danger of fraud is vital.
Anderson noted extortion also became a growing concern for EPS in 2023, “some of which was a result of the recent Gaslight project,” an investigation looking into area homebuilders being threatened with arson.
Anderson pointed out that police are aware there are always unreported crimes as well.
“If we look at sexual assaults, statistically only 38 per cent of those get reported,” he said. “We do encourage everybody to report to us.”
Jones also acknowledged police “don’t have all the data because they don’t have what’s not reported.”
“Certain things people may stop reporting — they start getting comfortable with disorder, comfortable with crime,” he said. “I’ve even had people I know say, ‘It was only my sunglasses in my truck and it’s not worth the deductable, worth reporting.’
“I think apathy is unfortunately on the rise.”
Jones said he thinks that apathy could stem from some people believing there will not be a benefit to them reporting crimes. He also said that he believes apathy is rising as more and more people increasingly rely on digital tools like social media for human connections.
“It creates a bit of apathy as well because we don’t have as much compassion for our fellow brothers and sisters.”
