New statistics posted to the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Police Department’s website show crime continues to fall in the city, with decreases in property crime, assaults and stolen vehicles over the first six months of 2024.
The statistics compare the to the same period in 2023.
Break-and-enters to homes and businesses are down from 1,604 to 1,125; theft of motor vehicles dropped from 417 to 335; and break-ins to vehicles decreased from 3,490 to 3,041.
Assaults dropped from 2,371 to 2,209.
The statistics represent a continuing trend that Police Chief Adam Palmer acknowledged in June when informing Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Police Board members of crime trends in the first three months of 2024.
At the time, Palmer said “crime trends in Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»are all heading down very significantly, and the numbers are going in a really good direction.”
He credited good police work and the addition of new officers and mental health workers for the downward trend. The number of abandoned calls to the VPD’s non-emergency line are also down.
“We're actually answering more calls and responding to more of those calls now, but the crime numbers are still down,” the chief said.
“You would think that when all those calls were being abandoned, it would drive the crime stats down. We're actually going to more of those calls, and the numbers are still going down for crime.”
Indigenous victims
Though crime is dropping overall, the data can be interpreted in different ways, depending on where a person lives in the city. For example, the number of recorded assaults in Strathcona reached 52 in June compared to four in Dunbar-Southlands and three in West Point Grey.
Strathcona also saw 11 robberies in June, whereas Killarney, Kerrisdale and Kitsilano had no reports last month. Victimization is also not reflected in the statistics, with previous VPD data showing Indigenous girls and women continue to be overrepresented as victims of violence.
The overall downward trend in crime is not new, as Glacier Media learned in January after analyzing Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»police statistics dating back to 2019. The total number of crimes reported to police decreased from 56,807 in 2019 to 46,259 in 2023.
That’s a decrease of 10,548 in a five-year span.
Drop in crime reports began in 2020
It's a trend that began in 2020 with 46,608 crimes reported, before dropping to 40,398 in 2021 and then climbing back up to 42,692 in 2022.
The biggest drop in that span was in break-ins to vehicles, with 7,171 recorded last year compared to 16,488 in 2019 — a downward trend police have attributed in previous reports and interviews to the pandemic’s effect on the type of crime.
Break-ins to vehicles have remained steady but far below the trend before the pandemic, with 9,884 recorded in 2020, 7,145 in 2021, 7,038 in 2022 and the 7,171 last year.
What has increased over the past five years are violent crimes, with 6,256 recorded in 2023. That’s an increase of 451 over 2019 and can be largely attributed to assaults, with 4,910 recorded in 2023.
Random stranger assaults, however, have declined.
Police said in a report to the police board in November 2023 that a random sample of assault data from 2021, 2022 and 2023 “suggests a steady decline in unprovoked stranger assaults.”
Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»recorded 78 homicides over the past five years, including 15 in 2023.
