Crimes against people and property declined for a sixth straight month in June, and while police leadership isn’t calling this a trend, it is pleased that fewer crimes are happening.
The Moose Jaw Police Service presented the June crime statistics during the board of police commissioners’ recent July meeting, which showed that total crimes against the person had declined 7.5 per cent year over year and total crimes against property had dropped 24.6 per cent year over year.
“We’re not going to say trends because we always look at long-term; however, as the year proceeds, we’re continuing to see lower reported crimes than we saw last year … ,” said Chief Rick Bourassa.
The agency will have a better idea of long-term crime rates in Moose Jaw once Statistics Canada releases its annual crime severity index (CSI) data sometime in July, he continued. This will also allow Moose Jaw to compare itself to other jurisdictions in Canada.
Crimes against people
Year-to-date — Jan. 1 to June 30 — numbers for crimes against the person for 2024 versus 2023 show:
- Homicide: 0 / 0
- Attempted murder: 0 / 0
- Assaults (sexual, common, with weapons, aggravated, against police): 180 / 213
- Robbery: 7 / 7
- Total: 273 / 295
Of note, there have been four incidents of assaults against police YTD compared to 14 during the same period last year, a drop of 71.4 per cent, the data shows. This category — similar to most others — has declined since January.
“I’m pretty happy to see that (tracking down). I don’t like seeing that our members are assaulted. And often that’s spitting and things like that … ,” said Bourassa.
“I don’t know if that means anything long-term, but we’ll keep an eye on it,” he continued. “But it is good to know our members aren’t being placed in even more harm’s way than they should be by people who are combative.”
Crimes against property
Year-to-date numbers for crimes against property for 2024 versus 2023 show:
- Break-ins (business, residence, other): 119/ 141
- Motor vehicle thefts: 32 / 24
- Thefts over $5,000: 9 / 21
- Thefts under $5,000: 372/ 562
- Arson: 0 / 0
- Mischief/property damage under $5,000: 124/ 150
- Total: 859 / 1,139
Other violations
Other violations include:
- Impaired driving: 44 / 52
- Failing to comply with court orders: 437 / 180
- Threats: 7 / 26
- Domestic disputes: 33 / 32
- Provincial liquor infractions: 72 / 67
- Vehicle collisions over $1,000: 147 / 101
- Summary offence tickets: 1,069 / 1,075
- Drugs (cocaine, marijuana, meth, other): 17 / 21
The data also showed that year to date, Moose Jaw police received 10,029 calls for service compared to 9,684 during the same period in 2023, a jump of 3.6 per cent.
Crime is a small part of what the MJPS handles and investigates, while as the service calls show, the organization deals with more non-crime incidents, said Bourassa. The data shows that calls for service are tracking to be higher this year than at any time in the past.
“That is generally dealing with disruptions in the community, (of) people struggling to cope and us providing the assistance,” he continued. “Our police and crisis teams (PACT) work with other agencies. (It is) very, very fundamentally important that we deal with those situations, or they can become criminal situations.”
This decline in crime figures is significant, especially since that data shows a general drop during the past 20 years, the chief said. While there may be “little bumps and things,” numbers are down in Moose Jaw and across Canada.
What police are now seeing is that some economic crimes are migrating online and victimizing people in that way, whereas criminals used to steal cheques or raid cash registers, he added.
