Sault Ste. Marie Police Service is dealing with a year-over-year increase in reported incidents involving firearms — a disturbing trend the city’s police chief says is related to a rise in illicit drug activity.
Last year, there were 150 reported incidents involving firearms, according to the police service's annual use-of-force report for 2024.
That’s an increase of 34 such incidents over the previous year, when officers responded to 116 firearms-related incidents.
“The only reason people in Sault Ste. Marie need a firearm . . . is usually to sell drugs or be part of the drug industry," said Sault Ste. Marie Police Service Chief Hugh Stevenson, while speaking with reporters following a scheduled meeting of the police services board held Monday.
"Unfortunately, we have seen every second night there is a gun call — person seen getting out of car with gun, we all deploy, we lock it down."
“We follow a process of incident command to make sure everybody’s safe, we get people out, and we find the weapons.
“Sometimes they’re cap guns, sometimes they’re loaded 9-mms, sometimes they’re shotguns and rifles.”
The police chief said many of the incidents involving firearms last year were linked to the execution of drug warrants locally.
“If you have an increase of product moving in your community, the people doing that have firearms.
"We have seen an increase in terms of members of the public, complainants, third parties seeing a weapon, and that causes us to respond,” Stevenson said.
“Usually, those are related to the drug industry. I can tell you in the six years I’ve been here, we did not have the level of weaponry possession and calls that we had in 2018.
“I think my deputy and I have seen it over the last few years, and the last two specifically, where there's much more use of weaponry on the street — and the calls for service demonstrate that.”
This increase is in spite of the fact that Sault Ste. Marie Police Service experienced a decrease of 57 use-of-force reports in 2024, and a decrease of 23 total incidents involving use of force by officers, when compared to statistics from the previous year.
“It has been significant, and it does worry me,” said Stevenson. “
That’s why I think collectively the community has to work towards eradicating those types of poisons in our community.”