StatCan says crime in Guelph saw slight increase, still one of safest cities in Canada

The Guelph Police Service says the Royal City remains one of the safest communities in Canada.

This comes after a report by Statistics Canada on the 2022 Crime Severity Index was released on Thursday.

StatCan says Ontario and nine other provinces saw an increase in the crime severity index in 2022.

Ontario had an index of 58.5, up from 56.2 in 2021 but below 2019, when it was at 61.

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Guelph police issued a news release coinciding with the release of the CSI report.

The CSI for Guelph in 2022 was 60.6, which is up eight per cent from 2021. Guelph police say that puts the city 12th out of the 35 census metropolitan areas in Canada.

Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo was 79.1, an increase of three per cent from 2021.

Guelph police say the overall increase in the city’s CSI is due to a jump in the violent crime severity index by 27.2 per cent. There was a 26 per cent increase in reported assaults and a 19 per cent increase in reported sexual crimes as well as two murders and two attempted murders, each up from zero in 2021.

They say non-violent CSI was virtually unchanged from 2021 to 2022.

Police attribute the CSI trends to an increase in response times for Priority 1 calls (up seven seconds), an increase in calls for service (from 72,565 to 77,933), and an increase of more than 5,000 hours of overtime (from 26,898 hours to 31,990 hours).