Violent Crimes are up across the prairies but non-violent offending is on the decline, including in Saskatoon. That from Police Chief Troy Cooper who commented on a recent report from Statistics Canada that provided comparisons of crime from 2019 to 2018.

While Saskatoon continues to see violent crimes on the rise, Police Chief Troy Cooper says the city’s crime severity index is fairly stable. Cooper says the 2019 severity index, which was received in the Stats Canada report, provides a rating of how crime is affecting a community with more serious crimes providing more weight. Cooper says Saskatoon’s rating has remained stable for the past few years despite an increase of violent offending in 2019. He suggests even with violent crimes up, a decrease in non-violent crimes has kept the crime severity index balanced compared to 2018. Cooper adds the severity index when compared to other centres across Canada was the lowest that it had been since crime has been measured that way.

Looking to stats from 2020 so far, Cooper says the role of gang association in violent offending didn’t have a common trend in 2019 but it has so far this year. He explains that year to date in 2020 two-thirds of homicides in the city have some sort of gang association or affiliation. Not necessarily gang motivated Copper adds, but the victims or suspects are associated with gangs in some way. Cooper adds that gang members are more likely to use guns and that has caused an increase of firearm use in Saskatoon. Cooper says the role that crystal meth plays in these crimes, is one of an economic foundation for gang violence but he says it also contributes to some of the non-violent property crime that the city sees.