Victoria, characterized for decades as a placid and safe city, posted the fourth-highest increase in severe crime across Canada in 2020, bucking a national trend that saw crimes reported to police drop 9.8 per cent from a year earlier.
Statistics Canada released data July 27 showing a crime severity index in the city of Victoria of 168 — significantly higher than the 76 seen in the region as a whole. Victoria’s crime severity index also tops that of Vancouver (105) and the B.C. average (96).
Victoria ranked the fourth-highest in the crime severity index (CSI) among cities profiled, with a 3 per cent year-over-year increase in 2020. The CSI had fallen in 27 of 35 urban centres profiled, according to Statistics Canada data.
All measures of the CSI—the overall CSI, the Violent CSI and the Non-violent CSI—decreased for the first time in 2020 after five years of increases, which makes the crime rise in Victoria somewhat surprising.
Victoria Police Chief Del Manak pointed to the city’s high index as an indicator that his officers are stretched and the department lacks resources to proactively prevent crime in the core.
“We have lost that capacity in Victoria. We are so reactive and responsive, because I don’t have enough officers to even respond to 911 calls,” Manak said.
Rob Gordon, a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University, was surprised to see such a high index in Victoria, which he would have expected to be close to but below Vancouver’s index.
The purpose of the index is “to say to policy makers and police personnel, you’ve got a problem here, and that’s what these numbers are saying to Del Manak,” Gordon said.
Victoria’s crime index is well above what it was in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2019, the index was almost 40 points below last year’s.
Last year’s higher number can be at least partially attributed to a change in reporting for 2020’s index, said Manak. Last year was the first that saw crime severity indexes reported separately for Victoria and Esquimalt, which were previously combined under one score because they’re both policed by the Victoria Police Department, he said.
Victoria’s number was previously kept down, because its higher score was combined with Esquimalt’s lower index. Now that the numbers are reported separately, Victoria’s index is magnifying a high crime severity index that has existed all along, Manak said.
Victoria police spokesperson Const. Cam MacIntyre told a July press conference that more than 50 per cent of police calls during a six-month period in 2020 were related to homelessness and related facilities, such as temporary shelters.
Some Victoria police are ‘shocked’ at the rise in criminal activity, most recently seen over the B.C. Day long weekend when an impaired driving roadblock downtown had to be lifted early by police because there were so many drunk drivers.
While police are still tabulating the number of impaired infractions handed out, 14 cars were impounded Saturday and 12 on Friday.
"I’m still shocked at how many impaired drivers are out there,” said Const. Stephen Pannekoek, who has been on the Victoria traffic detail for six years. “It got very busy very fast. Every tow truck All-Ways Towing had down there had a car on it and we had cars waiting.”
