The monthly crime statistics for July 2016 are out, and paint what has become a familiar picture for Regina; crimes against people are on par with last year and property crime is on the rise.
However, police are concerned about an increase in reports of attempted murder. At the end of July in 2015 there were four attempted murders, but that amount climbed to 17 in 2016.
“A lot of these things are one-off events. We don’t get called until after, so it’s difficult for the Regina Police Service (RPS) to stop that,” acting chief Dean Rae said.
He added that most of those incidents involved firearms or knives.
Overall, crimes against people rose by 0.8 per cent year-to-date in 2016.
On the property crime front, numbers continue to trend upward — driven by an increase to vehicle thefts and thefts from vehicles.
The RPS partnered with police agencies across the province to launch a summer ad campaign encouraging people to lock their vehicles and make sure valuables are removed.
“We’ve seen some reductions. I would suggest it’s likely not as big a success as we had hoped for, but we’re still doing the evaluation,” Rae said.
“Once we’re done the evaluation we’ll bring the results forward so everyone can see what the results were at that time.”
Smaller jurisdictions do not have the same monthly crime stat reports, so it will take longer form them to gather results.
A positive note coming out the report is that automated speed enforcement is effective in school zones.
Speed cameras have seen a substantial drop in tickets issued in school zones this year. As of July 30, 2015, 10,982 tickets were issued by the automated system. This year saw a 47 per cent drop, with 5,775 tickets issued.
Overall, automated speed ticketing is down 36 per cent, from 14,687 to 9,454.
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