City officials say it’s a challenge to stay ahead of violent crime in the city, but despite a spate of recent incidents — including a shooting on Sunday night that left one person dead and another hospitalized — police say gun incidents are about on par with last year.
“In terms of the data collection, we’re not dissimilar to the stats we ended up with last year,” Const. Dani McKinnon told Global Winnipeg.
“In terms of non-fatal shootings, last year there were just over 134 incidents. This year, although we’re moving into the final quarter, we’re sitting at about 100 … approximately. So in terms of it being a massive increase, it’s not. It’s quite similar to last year.”
McKinnon said much of the gun crime in Winnipeg is connected with the drug trade and gang networks.
“The shootings are generally not random in nature,” she said. “They’re driven from these networks.”
Coun. Markus Chambers (St. Norbert – Seine River) is City Hall’s police board chair. He recently returned from a visit to Vancouver for a policing conference, and said it was an opportunity to learn more about the inner workings of policing and the law — and to see how other Canadian cities are dealing with crime on their streets.
Chambers said the proliferation of 3D-printed “ghost” guns and gun parts is exacerbating the problem, and spreading untraceable weapons throughout the country.
“It’s a situation where we’ve got to get control of the guns. It’s something that we’re seeing happen across Canada — Winnipeg is not unique to it.”
“Legislation should address the problem that we’re having now with these ghost guns that are on the streets … and then protecting our borders,” he said.
Officials need to make sure that guns aren’t coming in from the U.S., he said. “We’ve got to clamp down on that as well to get some gun security here in our city. It’s the licensed gun owners who are being impacted, yet the illegal people are the ones causing the crimes.”
Chambers said Manitoba’s new joint warrant unit aims to further crack down on offenders by tackling what many perceive as a revolving door of criminals who are arrested and quickly released, only to re-offend a short time later.
“Bail reform is something the federal government has to look at and make changes to,” he said. “It’s not a situation of catch-and-release anymore, it’s release-and-catch. They’re out on the street very quickly after being arrested, after being charged, after being convicted. A lot of them are breaching their court sentences and they’re out on the streets and they’re reoffending.”
The warrant unit, Chambers said, aims to target repeat offenders — particularly violent ones — who are on city streets.
According to community activist Sel Burrows, who has long been involved in safety initiatives for the Point Douglas area, one key to reducing gun crime is to strengthen police efforts to disrupt the drug trade.
“It’s almost all the drug trade,” Burrows told Global Winnipeg. “If we want to do something about guns, we have to do something about disrupting the drug trade. The American ‘war on drugs,’ arresting all the low-levels, didn’t work, … but we can disrupt them.
“It’s a retail trade. We need to go back to where we could evict a drug dealer as soon as they set up.”
Burrows said the community also needs to be involved, as local residents tend to be aware when neighbours are selling drugs or carrying weapons.
“The community knows where the drug dealers are. Get them evicted really fast, that’s part of getting rid of the guns. The neighbours know who has guns. We need to empower the community. Eyes on the street.”