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By Troy Gillard

trending downward

Red Deer 10th among Canada’s Most Dangerous Places

Nov 19, 2019 | 2:34 PM

There’s still a long way to go, but lower crime rates have helped Red Deer rank lower on Maclean’s magazine’s annual list of “Canada’s Most Dangerous Places.”

Our city had Canada’s tenth-highest Crime Severity Index (CSI) for 2018 at 170. That’s a drop of nearly 25 per cent from the year previous when Red Deer had a CSI of 222, which was sixth-highest in the country.

The Crime Severity Index is a Statistics Canada measure of all police-reported crime, taking into consideration both the volume and seriousness of offences. The 2018 data is the most current available and was released on July 23, 2019.

The national CSI average for 2018 for the 237 communities ranked by MacLean’s is 75.01.

“When you drop by more than 50 points on the CSI in one year, that’s significant,” says Red Deer RCMP Supt. Gerald Grobmeier. “You can hope for a few percentage points, but to drop by that much is very significant.”

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Red Deer also saw a sizeable drop in the five-year change in crime at 12.41 (Red Deer’s CSI in 2013 was 157.3). As a result, our city fell from second in all of Canada in this category to 79^th.

“The economy hasn’t gotten any better, and there haven’t been any changes to the justice system, but the more focused and strategic direction we have at the detachment, the commitment we received from The City of Red Deer through more members, plus the collaboration we have with probation and parole officers and Crown counsel, we’re starting to see the results of some of those efforts,” Grobmeier suggests.

When it comes to individual crime categories, Red Deer remains above the national average in many of them but is seeing some significant decreases.

Red Deer crime stats for 2018 (Source: Statistics Canada/MacLean’s)

“It’s indicating we are moving in the right direction, (but) there’s certainly still a fair bit of work to do,” says Paul Goranson, Director of Protective Services for The City of Red Deer.

Goranson says City Mounties have implemented a number of leading practices that are paying off.

“Project Pinpoint (started in 2016) is a significant initiative that’s focused on targeting prolific offenders. It’s been in place for a number of years and it’s been a model project that has been shared across the province,” he highlighted.

“We’ve added additional police officers over the last number of years, as well. That doesn’t always result in lower numbers because often times when you’re making more arrests the actual stats go up. But we’re hoping that this trend can continue in the direction that it’s going.”

Cautious optimism is Goranson’s underlying message regarding the latest crime stats.

“We don’t want to overly celebrate them. Based on the community safety meetings we’ve had over the past couple weeks there’s still substantive concerns about crime in Red Deer. It’s taken a number of years to create those concerns and it’s going to take some time to turn that around.”

“We’re in community safety together,” Grobmeier added. “It’s the responsibility of every employee at The City of Red Deer and every Red Deerian, as well. Obviously, RCMP have a huge role to play, that’s our job, but together we can have a much better effect.”

For the second year in a row, North Battleford, SK had the country’s highest Crime Severity Index at 384.57, followed by Thompson, MB and Quesnel, BC.

Wetaskiwin is worst among Alberta communities with Canada’s fourth-highest CSI at 270. Grande Prairie ranked ninth in Canada (173) followed by Red Deer (170). Lethbridge came in fifteenth (159).

Sylvan Lake ranks 54^th in Canada with a Crime Severity Index of 99, and Lacombe is 125^th with a CSI of 66.

The latest edition of the MacLean’s magazine list of Canada’s Most Dangerous Places can be found in its entirety here.