Sault Ste. Marie Police Service Chief Hugh Stevenson says that a rise in property crime and bail violations – along with ongoing opioid issues in the city – are contributing to the increase in calls for service over the past year.
Calls for police assistance went up 12.8 per cent in 2018 when compared to numbers from 2017.
“The more we put officers out there and look for and mitigate and manage the opioid issues in the community, obviously more officers on the street see more offences,” Stevenson told board members during Thursday’s Police Services Board meeting.
Property crime statistics from city police for the past year show substantial increases from the previous year – while break and enters are up from 678 in 2017 to 798 in 2018 (17 per cent), the most glaring stat gleaned from those year-end totals is the number of attempted break-and-enters that were reported in the city.
In 2018, 44 attempted break-and-enters were reported to police – a rise from 14 attempted break-and-enters in 2017. That’s a 214.3 per cent increase.
Another notable increase in year-to-date numbers from city police can be found in the number of thefts from vehicles – from 444 reported thefts from vehicles in 2017 to 699 thefts from vehicles in 2018, an increase of nearly 60 per cent.
“We’ve had many discussions in this room on the opioid crisis issue, and obviously the subculture of the drug industry requires these individuals to get money where they don’t have it in an income, and they tend to use theft from autos,” Stevenson told board members.
The police chief says that’s not to say that break and enters didn’t occur before, but it does, he says, indicate that more people are reporting property crimes, especially when it comes to thefts from vehicles.
“The community, given our press releases, is much more aware of the fact that they should check their vehicle, and I think those calls for service are coming in more now...we encourage people to report it, because that allows us to know where the activity is occurring in the city,” he said.
John Bruno, who served as acting chair for Thursday's Police Services Board meeting in Mayor Christian Provenzano’s absence, asked Stevenson if some of the rising property crime can be pinned on repeat offenders in the community.
Stevenson pointed out the rise in bail violations, from 365 bail violations in 2017 to 509 in 2018 – a 39.5 per cent increase.
“That tells us something – that we still continually have a catch and release issue,” Stevenson said. “Like I said many times before, our arrests have more or less doubled in this particular area. As a result of that, we put them before the courts, which is our objective and our mandate.”
“We bring the evidence before the court, we lay the charges – and when they’re released and not held, they continue to commit criminal offences to the point where we’ve had many on bail with at least three or four different release provisions and we arrest again and bring [them] through the system. So it continues to be an issue for us to deal with, and in fairness, the numbers reflect that,” he continued. “We do lay the breach of conditions or fail to appears on them every time, so that gives us a good indicator of where we actually sit and that’s why we continue to lobby the provincial government to do something about the catch and release issue in this city, and across northern Ontario.”
During a break in the board meeting, Stevenson told reporters that he has mentioned the ‘catch and release’ issue to the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police (OACP), a lobby group for police chiefs, in order to “do something and continue to lobby the provincial government to sit down at the table and discuss why this is occurring.”
“It happens in the courtroom, and we all appreciate and respect the fact that the judiciary is independent, but we all have to work together to keep the community safe,” Stevenson said.
Asked by SooToday if bail violations are eating up resources within the police department, Stevenson told reporters that enforcing bail violations can be a taxing and costly process when officers are tied up.
“I mean obviously the more times a person goes through the system and gets released, the more charges occur – and in some situations, if the person was held, we wouldn’t be going back out to arrest them because they’d be in detention,” said Stevenson. “So it is an expensive industry when we bring people through the courts, and by 3 p.m., they’re back on the street – and we have many scenarios where they continue to reoffend the following night or the night after, and they’re just coming back through the system.”