The Saskatchewan RCMP say they have seen an increase in the number of homicide cases over the last four years.
Supt. Joshua Graham, the officer in charge of the Saskatchewan RCMP major crimes branch, said there have been 16 homicides in the province to date for 2023. In the first half of 2022, 12 homicide cases were recorded.
There were 42 homicides recorded last year, 34 cases in 2021, 31 cases in 2020 and 20 cases in 2019.
Graham said it’s hard to pinpoint the causes and a lot of times, they may be a cluster of homicides in one month but not the next.
“It’s very hard to predict those,” said Graham. “More often than not, they’re happening in different parts of the province, which puts a greater amount of workload on our teams not only to find investigators to respond to these different homicides, but as well the geographic distances to travel.”
Graham said the Saskatchewan RCMP major crimes branch looks at the year-end total as more of an aggregate view of the increase in violent crimes, particularly homicides. For the first half of the year, which is from January to June, there is not a huge difference in what they are seeing from the past years, but Graham said that some months may make up for others.
Graham said the Battlefords in general represent a very high crime scene index (CSI) rate.
“The Battlefords is probably our busiest location that respond to homicides there,” he said. “But beyond that, other places in northern Saskatchewan (such as) La Ronge, La Loche … but also other Indigenous communities up north and some in southern Saskatchewan as well.”
Graham said Saskatchewan’s Indigenous communities are overrepresented when it comes to homicides by far. He said it comes from a bunch of complex social factors such as poverty and drug and alcohol abuse.
“There’s no doubt that Indigenous communities have been impacted through generations of harm done through colonization as well,” he said.
“When it comes to the actual homicides and causes, a lot of the times it’s personal disagreements. Maybe it’s gang-related, gang-involved drugs, alcohol, those sort of things…. Indigenous communities are certainly the vast majority of the homicides we attend.”
The Saskatchewan RCMP is seeing an increased amount of firearm use in homicides in the province.
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