Prince George’s crime rate saw a bit of a dip in 2022 according to the latest Crime Severity Index issued by Stats Canada.
The northern capital ranked 12th in the country among all police services with a rating of 207.1.
North Battleford, Saskatchewan took the top spot by a large margin with a mark of 557.1, beating out Thompson, Manitoba (531.4).
Spokesperson, Warren Silver told Vista Radio it’s a slight step in the right direction when compared to 2021.
“This is an improvement compared to last year where Prince George ranked eighth for CSI, 12th for violent and seventh for non-violent (crime).”
Silver added our city saw a decline in robberies and second-degree murder, which led to the city dropping from its eighth-place ranking a year prior.
“Because those had gone down as well as some other things like breaking and entering, mischief, possession of weapons also went down and those really drove meaning that the entire CSI in Prince George saw a decrease.”
According to Stats Can, the number of actual incidents has been on the decline since 2020 – despite the pandemic, going from 19,562 to 15,802 last year.
In addition, the total number of adults charged also dipped from 1,920 in 2022 to 1,773 last year. However, youth crime in the city seems to be on the uptick going from 56 youths charged three years ago (2020) to 86 in 2022.
PG has the fifth-highest Crime Severity Index in the province next to Williams Lake (246.3), Quesnel (245.2), Langley City (229.5), and Dawson Creek (209).
The index numbers are for populations over 10 thousand people.
Silver noted homicides increased in every Canadian province in 2022 with BC tallying 155, an increase of 30 from the previous year (2021).
Five of those murders took place in Prince George. Our city has already surpassed that number in 2023 tallying eight.
Something going on in the Prince George area you think people should know about?
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