Despite a sharp increase in the crime rate, police say Powell River is still a safe place to live.
Powell River RCMP staff sergeant Rod Wiebe presented his annual report to city council’s committee of the whole on Tuesday, February 14.
“When I ran the stats I didn’t realize they were that high; it sounds quite alarming,” Wiebe told the committee. “The numbers sound bad, but they are still low. Powell River is still a safe town.”
Break and enter, theft under $5,000 and shoplifting all increased between 25 to 36 per cent over 2015 stats. Violent crime also increased by eight per cent.
Police continue to see alarming numbers of impaired drivers on Powell River streets. Wiebe said criminal-code impaired driving investigations were up 73 per cent last year with 52 in 2016 and 30 in 2015.
The high number of criminal impaired driving charges is related to the increasing number of residents who have already gone through the province’s one-time administrative process, said Wiebe.
“People are starting to use those up, so now when we deal with them we go straight to criminal-code investigation,” Wiebe told the committee.
Calls for incidents related to mental health were the only area that saw a slight decrease over the year previous, 203 in 2016 compared with 222 in 2015.
RCMP officers responded to 5,625 calls for service last year, about a two per cent decrease over 2015 and 2014 call numbers.
Theft under $5,000 had 109 complaints in 2016, compared to 89 in 2015.
“Every time we get a crime spree, it really does spike our numbers,” said Wiebe.
In 2016, 64 calls were related to break and enters, while 68 calls were regarding shoplifting.
Last year, Powell River had a number of what Wiebe referred to as “transient criminals” in town and their activities impacted the increases.
“It takes us a while to catch up to them to get them on charges and get them out of town,” he said.
Powell River’s “prolific offenders” also impacted crime rates, he said.
“You can see our crime spikes are exactly when they get out of jail,” said Wiebe.
Drug investigations increased 30 per cent last year as part of Powell River RCMP’s general investigations focus on drug-related crime.
“They’ve had great success,” said Wiebe.
Since the beginning of the new year, officers have arrested four dealers of hard drugs. Police conducted 108 investigations in 2016, up from 84 the year before.
Wiebe said the detachment has focused its resources to address reducing the amount of drugs on the street associated with the fentanyl crisis.
