With the number of homicides in the city now standing at eight for the year so far, Prince George could be well on the way to maintaining a dubious honour.
According to Statistics Canada data, in 2022, the city was British Columbia's most crime-ridden and given the trend for the year so far there appears to be no reason to believe 2023 will be any better.
For obvious reasons, murders are assigned the top score in the Statistics Canada crime severity index with counts of manslaughter not far behind, and if the past is any indicator, they weigh heavily in determining which communities rise and fall in the rankings released about this time each year.
As it stands, the number of homicide cases in the city is the highest it's been in at least 25 years, according to Statistics Canada, the previous most-worst year being 2010 when there were seven homicides within city limits and two more in the immediate rural area, .
But whether that should give the public in general cause to worry is another question. In the opinion of Prince George RCMP Supt. Shawn Wright we can still more or less breath easy, noting that six of them appear to have been targeted events that involved people with a criminal history.
"The majority of the homicides so far this year are connected to the illicit drug trade so it's either competing to sell drugs or having significant drug debts and the others are between people known to each other," Wright said. "Obviously, we would sound all the bells and whistles if we had a random type attack where the public needs to worry going outside their house but fortunately we haven't seen anything like that."
Wright said the detachment has brought up resources from the Lower Mainland to help with the investigations and to stem any wave of rising trouble. Whenever there is a flare up of violent conflicts, members of the B.C. Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit's Uniform Gang Enforcement Team (UGET) are brought in to deal what could be described as the "usual suspects."
UGET members appeared in the city in April, shortly after the year's fifth homicide was recorded. Although there has been one more drug-related homicide since then, Wright believes the move has had an beneficial effect.
"I certainly think so and that's why we continue to bring them up," Wright said. "Certainly that in and of itself is not a long-term solution but it can certainly have an impact against those individuals, particularly in the short term, immediately after one of those types of incidents."
Sadly, there were recently two more homicides in quick succession, one at a downtown motel on July 17 and one the next day at a townhouse complex in the Bowl. Both victims were women and neither had a criminal past, Wright said.
