While overall criminal offences in the Boundary area were down 11 per cent from 2011 to 2012, there were increases in certain crimes in Grand Forks and Christina Lake.
In the Boundary Regional RCMP’s 2013 report on policing, Grand Forks RCMP’s Staff Sgt. Jim Harrison said regionally, property crime stabilized with only a decrease of 1.1 per cent, violent crimes against people were down 37.3 per cent and other criminal code offences were down 16.7 per cent.
However, the report said that mischief increased from 20 to 32 incidents between 2011 and 2012 at Christina Lake.
Harrison explained that noisy parties were included in the category and it wasn’t only property damage.
“There was an increased number of complaints about loud parties where people wouldn’t turn the music down and that type of thing,” Harrison told the Grand Forks Gazette, adding that if there was a noise bylaw in effect in the regional district, it would’ve been recorded under that.
“Because of the fact there isn’t a bylaw, we have to score it that way, so it tends to inflate the statistics and people, when they see the mischief, they’re thinking, ‘OK, wilful damage and there’s vandals out there,’ but no, it’s really not,” said Harrison.
The staff sergeant said that there was one particular person at Christina Lake who was constantly holding weekend parties, and neighbours lodged a number of complaints.
“Each one of those are a separate offence and gets scored that way. We never laid charges on him, we simply warned him and eventually, by the end of the summer, we went out and told him, ‘If this happens again, we’re laying a criminal charge,’ and after that, he kind of toned it down. It does kind of tend to inflate the statistics,” Harrison explained.
In the City of Grand Forks, total break-and-enters (B&E) increased from 41 to 48 between 2011 and 2012, while theft under $5,000 increased from 47 to 55, B&Es at businesses increased from 11 to 21 and theft from vehicles skyrocketed from 35 to 60 but Harrison said that problem has been largely remedied as the RCMP targeted prolific offenders, including ones that broke into vehicles.
“What happened is right towards the end of the year, we had a whole rash of thefts from vehicles and we eventually caught a couple of people doing it and then it just died down,” Harrison said. “In one night, one person can go out and do six or seven thefts from vehicles, which is what we were seeing, and the numbers shoot up.”
Incidents of mischief in Grand Forks Area D totalled 30 in 2010, dropped to 19 in 2011 and rose to 34 again in 2012.
Harrison said the ways incidents were recorded could account for this.
“I think that might be a change in how scoring was done on the files. Before we were actually scoring it as bylaws when it should’ve been scored as mischief because there is no noise bylaw in Area D. That could’ve been scoring errors and things that should’ve been reportable to Stats Canada that we weren’t scoring,” Harrison explained. “If you look at it, it kind of comes back to where it was in 2010 in Area D.”
In terms of mischief in the city, there was a decrease from 128 in 2010 to 106 in 2011 to 91 in 2012, and again, Harrison said it was due to targeting prolific offenders.
“Quite frankly, it was fast investigation,” Harrison said of the drop. “Mischief/wilful damage is a really tough one to investigate because there isn’t a lot of physical evidence left behind but the members did get on it quickly and quickly identified those people who were responsible and that makes a big difference. A lot of times, those offences are inter-related because you get a gang of prolific offenders and they’re not just doing thefts, they’re not just doing B&Es, they’re doing all sorts of stuff, including the assaults and the uttering threats.”
Incidents of uttering threats against a person decreased from 26 to 13 between 2011 and 2012 in the city.
Calls for service at Christina Lake totalled 573 in 2012 – calls in the City of Grand Forks totalled 2,003 and 752 in Area D.