Hamilton police reveal shootings down in 2023 but gun seizures lower than last year

As the new year approaches, Hamilton Police (HPS) is painting a picture of what kind of difference reallocating frontline resources did this past year to battle increasing gun violence in the city, which rose some 24 per cent in 2022.

With just days left in 2023, HPS is reporting just 33 shootings since January equating to 12 fewer than the 45 recorded a year ago.

Although shootings are down, the 442 guns taken off the streets appear to be falling short of the 526 the service reported as seized all of last year.

HPS says 22 people were considered victims of gun crime in 2023, up five from the 17 recorded in 2022.

Some 172 charges were also laid in connection with the 33 shootings this year.

Last December, Police chief Frank Bergen told Global News the movement of firearms across the Golden Horseshoe was “not good’ and sparked conversations with federal, provincial and greater Toronto-area partners on a “step-up” to stop the growing trend.

Results from an eight-month 2022 Toronto Police investigation, dubbed Project Barbell, shone a light on how big that problem is with 62 firearms taken off the streets between May and December.

Investigators said most of the weapons were handguns but five were AR-15-type firearms and three were AK-type firearms with only one traced back to Ontario and the rest sourced from the United States.

Bergen said the investigations pointed to a connection between neighbourhood gangs and a drug sub-culture in which groups are “picking fights” with each other.

“These are the ones that you see that are the shootings into homes,” Bergen said.

Homicides in the city appear to be on the rise year over year, with 10 so far in 2023.

The latest was just three weeks ago when a 33-year-old man was shot several times on Nebo Road.

HPS reported a three-decade low of just five murders in 2022.

Hamilton police says their 911 communications branch dealt with 457,442, according to data pulled as of Dec. 29.

The service says that equates to an average of 1,253 calls every day.

More than half, 231,573 calls, were considered to be an actual emergency while 361,339 required a police response.

About four per cent of the 2023 calls, 17,703, were disclosed as “pocket dials.”