‘It’s not accurate in what is going on here’; Kamloops safety committee fights back at crime ranking

KAMLOOPS — Kamloops is Number 1, with the highest crime rate of any census metropolitan area, according to Statistics Canada. If you stopped reading there, you’d likely be shocked, but Kamloops’ safety committee says there is a reason behind the startling statistic.

“You can manage statistics anyway you want, but we are doing great here,” said Dale Bass, city councillor and member of the Safety and Security Select Committee. “It’s unfortunate about the headline. It’s not good journalism in my point of view, because it’s inaccurate — but it’s accurate. That’s the problem with statistics — it’s accurate in the classification, but it’s not accurate in what is going on here.”

Being compared to places like Calgary and Vancouver mean one police file in Kamloops equates to more than 20 in larger centers, helping skew the numbers, according to Bass.

“If you look at us compared to the cities that we would have been compared to last year — Quesnel, Williams Lake, Prince George — we wouldn’t be talking about this. Our crime stats are going down. But now you compare us to great big cities and it looks like it’s not good here. Our last report from Supt. Jeff Pelley with the RCMP showed that he’s bringing the stats down.”

The good news in the reports is that violent crime is down in the Tournament Capital. But as serious crime lowered, non-violent crimes increased, leaving many businesses to feel the effects.

“It’s seems to go in waves. For instance, back in February, we had a bit of a crime wave in the downtown area where we had a number of smash and grabs. And I believe most of it has been fueled by the drug trade and the opioid crisis,” said Howie Reimer, executive director of the Downtown Kamloops Business Improvement Association.

Every year, the business improvement associations run a survey to gauge the impacts of crime, with the next survey to roll out later this fall.

“It’s safe downtown — I feel safe, mind you. And I hope that people do feel safe when they come downtown. We have a beatiful community. We’re all working together to make it better,” added Reimer.

And while Bass doesn’t fully like how the stats have been presented, she did agree there is still important work to be done in the city.

“We are starting to see the bigger city problems. And we have a lot of problems in the city just like every other city does. We have got a poverty problem, we have a working poor problem, we’ve got a mental health problem — we’ve got a load of problems that are fueling this but we are handling it,” stated Bass.