Regina crime stats: Crimes against property up, drug charges down

Regina police continue to struggle with crimes against property, including theft, arson and mischief.

According to the monthly crime statistics released at the Board of Police Commissioners meeting on Wednesday, there has been an overall year-to-date increase of 14.1 per cent in those crimes.

Specifically, theft under $5,000 is up 18.1 per cent, mischief is up 21.6 per cent and arson rose 42.7 per cent.

Regina Police Chief Evan Bray has often said that the city’s meth problem is believed to be behind many offences.

However, the latest crime stats show the number of drug charges laid in Regina have dropped by 37 per cent since this time in 2018.

Bray explained the decrease in the number of arrests in regards to drugs is predominantly based on enforcement.

“Sometimes the number of drug charges is misleading to the problem that it is in the community. That’s really, I think, what we’re seeing there,” said Bray.

When it comes to drugs, he said police are more focused on long-term projects that take more drugs off the streets instead of going after people with a small amount of drugs in their pockets.

“Our drug unit does a lot of focused investigation on, what I call, higher-level dealer type of investigations, trafficking type of investigations where they’re seizing large amounts of drugs. They’re laying charges on one, two or three individuals as opposed to going out and charging a bunch of individuals who I often refer to as people who have an illness or a sickness, which is addiction,” said Bray.

The number of crimes against the person has seen more of a leveling out. Those figures were down 1.2 per cent over September of 2018, although there were more robberies, which saw a 15.2-per-cent increase.