Prince George may be a victim of the good fortune of other communities, sat the writer of a Maclean's magazine story that rates this city as Canada's most dangerous place to live for the third consecutive year.
Although still in the top spot in the annual rankings, Prince George's score has improved, Patricia Treble said Friday.
"It's gone down and it's consistently gone down," Treble said. "And there are other cities that are going consistently up. The big climbers this year were Red Deer and Grande Prairie."
The numbers are based on a Statistics Canada study that assesses crime severity for 239 communities across the country with populations of 10,000 people or greater, giving weights to each type crime depending on their seriousness.
Prince George's ranking in that study stood at 14th for both crime in general and violent crime in particular in 2011, down from seventh and 11th respectively for 2010 out of 239 communities with populations of 10,000 people or greater.
However, the Maclean's assessment is restricted to Canada's 100 largest cities - Belleville with a population of 50,000 being the smallest.
"We always look at the top 100 because that's where the vast majority of the population is," Treble said.
Prince George's crime severity index stood at 105 per cent higher than the Canadian average, down from 114 per cent the year before.
"You're going in the right direction, it's just that others are going in the right direction faster than you," Treble said. "In the whole country, crime is being reduced."
During a press conference Thursday, Mayor Shari Green said she found it ironic that a story on crime Maclean's is headlined "Getting away with murder," given that there were no murders in Prince George during 2011.
However, Treble's story is separate and headlined "Canada's most dangerous cities."
Treble also noted that although the story is running in an edition dated Dec. 17, it had been out on sale since last Thursday and will remain on newsstands until the end of the year because it's the magazine's annual newsmakers issue.
