With the damning story in Maclean's magazine this week highlighting Prince George's high rates in some categories of crime during 2010, the Prince George RCMP researched how the statistics look for 2011 as a preview of next year's possible results in the magazine.
Almost all categories of crime have gone down, but drug offenses held steady. In 2006 there were 409 drug cases in Prince George, it hit a peak of 588 last year, and in 2011 it is expected to finish up somewhere around the 538 mark.
According to Prince George RCMP spokesperson CraigDouglass, this week's marijuana grow-op busted on Upper Mud River Road is an example of why the public should actually enjoy seeing high numbers in the drug category at least for a little while yet. "We are behind those high numbers," he said. "The criminals were always there doing those crimes at the same rate, but the numbers have gone up because we have put a huge emphasis on that kind of crime, doing kick-ins of crackshacks and going after grow-ops."
UNBC professor Jonathan Swainger researches criminal history, with a special focus on Northern B.C., and agreed that "this is the kind of stat that actually shows the police doing better work, not more criminals."
Murder, aggravated assault and the like come to police attention in a sudden flash but, Swainger explained, drug crimes are so secretive that they happen almost exclusively by old fashioned police work, with healthy doses of public tips to point them in the right direction.
Prince George RCMP have had a lot of help in that department. In the past two years, for reasons connected to the high rate of criminal activity in the region, the RCMP and provincial government have invested heavily in extra police attention based out of Prince George. Most of it is centred on the drug trade monopolized by gangs.
The work done on a regional basis by RCMP North District, the Cariboo Region Integrated Marijuana Enforcement (CRIME) Task Force, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit's plainclothes anti-gang team, and the occasional visit by their uniformed enforcement squad has all been added into the mix of work being done by the city's municipal detachment.
More than 20 grow-ops have been targeted by North District and CRIME, in 2011, just in the Prince George region.
Douglass said another stat that was not a big part of the Maclean's magazine calculations but is high on the local public's mind is downtown crime. There, too, the case numbers have gone way up. Most of them are charges of people breaching their court conditions.
"We went from approximately 200 files to about 700 files, just for breaches in the downtown," said Douglass. "Those same people were always there breaching, so the crime rate did not go up, what happened was we put a focus there, and by doing that work better, we caused the number of files to increase a lot."
