Murder-free city in rare company
By Frank Armstrong
Local News - Friday, July 22, 2005 @ 07:00
The Kingston region, once one of the murder centres of Canada, lost its macabre
ranking last year to become one of just four homicide-free communities, a
Statistics Canada study revealed yesterday.
The study by the Centre for Justice Statistics, an arm of Statistics Canada,
says Kingston, Sudbury, Thunder Bay and Sherbrooke, Que., were the only
communities among 27 with populations over 100,000 where homicides didn’t
occur in 2004.
The study uses data from Kingston Police, OPP detachments in Loyalist and South
Frontenac and the joint forces penitentiary squad.
John Turner, chief of the centre’s police surveys program, said Kingston’s
zero homicide rate represents a sharp drop from 2003, when Kingston had the
highest homicide rate among Canada’s 10 biggest population centres.
“In 2003, you had five [homicides], but of those five, three were in a
correctional institution and one was in a community group home halfway house,”
Turner said yesterday.
Offender Karl Joseph McNeil was killed in March 2003 at the Portsmouth Centre
halfway house in Kingston.
The only community-based murder that year in Kingston was the Christmas-time
killing of Maureen Nicholson by her Kingston Police officer husband Ian, who
also killed himself.
There were three homicides in 2002 and two in 2001. None occurred in a
correctional institution.
He said it’s not unusual for a few communities each year to be homicide-free.
“Generally, two to five cities every year won’t have any.”
When compared with 17 other census metropolitan areas, the Kingston region’s
overall crime rate ranked around the middle. Kingston experienced 7,010 crimes
per 100,000 people.
However, that’s an increase of 2.6 per cent from 2003 – the fifth highest
increase in crime among cities its size.
Turner said people shouldn’t necessarily be alarmed by the rising crime
statistic, however. “At a national level, 2.6 per cent might be a little more
significant, but when you get down to a smaller city, it’s not that wide a
fluctuation,” he said.
“With the smaller populations it doesn’t take as much to have an impact from
a percentage point of view.”
Nationally, the crime rate fell by one per cent in 2004. Over all, Regina,
Sask., had the highest crime rate of the mid-sized cities at 15,430 while
Saguenay, Que., had the lowest at 4,079.
Kingston’s increased crime rate was boosted by a skyrocketing robbery rate
increase of 40 per cent.
But that figure may not be as alarming as it looks. Kingston Police
criminologist Ray Lonsdale (who was contacted out of the office and didn’t
have statistics with him) said many of the robberies in the city were committed
by one man.
“We had a guy doing Mac’s Milk robberies last year,” Lonsdale said. “We
ended up arresting him ... [but] I think he was responsible for five.”
Kingston’s robbery rate was 49 per 100,000 people last year, near the lower
end of robbery rates for cities its size.
Its break-and-enter rate was about average: 647 break-and-enters per 100,000.
Kingston experienced the second-lowest motor vehicle theft rate among cities its
size, at 233 thefts per 100,000. Only Saint John had fewer, 135 per 100,000.
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