Violent crime up in smaller centres; Serious charges spike 25% in Ontario's towns between 2000 and 2007

Oddly I had not realized it until I read this article but much of the more serious crime I see has been coming from smaller centres such as Bradford and Keswick.

I don't know what is causing it but there certainly is more crime and a lot more drugs in small towns than in the past.

The Toronto Star
Thu 21 Aug 2008
Page: A19
Section: News
Byline: Chinta Puxley
Source: The Canadian Press

Drugs, guns and violent crime charges are seeping steadily into small- town Ontario, where the number of serious criminal charges is outpacing even major urban centres, an analysis by The Canadian Press has found.

The number of violent crime charges - from criminal harassment and assault to robbery and murder - have largely stabilized in Ontario's major cities, but the opposite appears to be the case in less populated centres, where the number of serious charges laid between 2000 and 2007 spiked by nearly 25 per cent.

The number of weapons charges shot up in all but four of these smaller centres during the seven years covered by the province-wide statistics, which are compiled from about 50 courthouse locations and provided online by the Ministry of the Attorney General.
But it was in the towns and cities with fewer than 100,000 residents where weapons charges doubled during the same period, rising at a dramatically faster pace than in the province's larger cities.

Some point to unemployment and a loss of community togetherness as possible reasons for the spike in charges. Others blame the Ontario government's "Toronto-centric" crackdown on guns and gangs, which, they say, has done little besides push criminal activity down the highway.

Still others argue the charges say more about where police are focusing their attention than they do about crime rates.

Dave Ross, spokesperson for OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino, said Fantino couldn't comment on the spike in charges because the force needed more than a month to crunch its own numbers.
Attorney General Chris Bentley said he would leave it to police to explain the increase in charges, but said the spike makes sense.

"When you put more police on the streets, when you have specific initiatives designed to go after specific types of offences, those are two of many circumstances that result in increased numbers," said Bentley, noting that the overall crime rate in Ontario has continued to fall.

Whatever the explanation, the phenomenon is posing a challenge to local police and unnerving long-time residents who are coming to grips with the fact their homes aren't immune to so-called "downtown" crimes like robbery, drugs and even murder.

"At one time, you would never hear of a robbery - a daylight robbery at a bank was unheard of," said Don MacNeil, a retired provincial police officer in Orillia, which saw the largest spike in weapons charges in the province during the seven years since 2000. "Now, nobody gets too excited about it."

Orillia, home to OPP headquarters, is considering following the example of larger cities by installing cameras in the downtown core to monitor criminal activity.

Weapons charges in the Orillia area jumped more than 500 per cent, rising from 14 counts in 2000 to nearly 90 last year. Violent crime charges also increased - almost 850 last year, compared with just over 550 in 2000.
Crime appears to be moving more and more beyond the borders of large cities and into small-town Canada. A Statistics Canada study released last year found small urban communities across the country had higher overall crime rates than big cities.

The study found the overall crime rate for small communities with fewer than 100,000 residents was 43 per cent higher than large cities and about 58 per cent higher than rural communities.

Smaller communities also had the highest rates for total violent crime, surpassing large cities, the study found.