INNISFAIL – Heading into 2024 the Innisfail RCMP detachment had reason to be satisfied but never complacent with its latest crime statistics for the town.
Overall crime is significantly down in the municipality for the first 11 months of 2023 compared to the same time frame in 2022, notably property offences, but crimes against persons are up.
And crime is also on the rise in the rural areas outside the town in areas of Red Deer County where Innisfail Mounties have law enforcement jurisdiction.
The latest RCMP statistics, released as Innisfail (Municipal) and Innisfail (Provincial) crime statistic summaries, were included in a comprehensive report for town council’s agenda package on Dec. 18.
The report showed that over the first 11 months of 2023 the town has experienced a 17 per cent decrease in total Criminal Code offences, including a 22 per cent drop in property offences.
For the first 11 months of 2022, there were a total of 482 property offences compared to 375 in the same period of 2023.
“We had three arsons last year, and then it went down to one. We had 35 break and enters the year before, and we got to 22. Everything is just kind of down like a little bit,” said Innisfail RCMP Staff Sgt. Ian Ihme in an interview with the Albertan.
However, there has been a 14 per cent jump in crimes against persons, including robberies, assaults and sexual assaults.
For the first 11 months of 2022 there were a total of 118 crimes against persons compared to 135 in the same period of 2023.
For all Criminal Code offences committed in the Town of Innisfail, there are 119 fewer in 2023 (596) than in 2022 (715).
Outside of town in Red Deer County the Innisfail RCMP encountered a 12 per cent overall increase in total Criminal Code offences, including a four per cent hike in property crimes and a 27 per cent jump in persons offences.
Ihme, however, was cautious with his comments on the latest stats, noting any area can be skewed out of proportion if there is a sudden high numbered crime spree, especially so if the original overall numbers were low to begin with.
“The Town of Innisfail is a very safe place, regardless of whatever stats that I put out,” emphasized Ihme. “If I look at one of my stats that looks really good for us, like theft of motor vehicles being down by 51 per cent; a look at the actual numbers has 18 fewer.
“It’s significant, but if you get one motivated offender who moves into the community and all of a sudden steals five motor vehicles in one night that stat is blown to heck,” he added. “We've got fairly low crime to begin. When we see these little movements, like 10 less than this for a whole year than what we had the year before, that will show a big increase or decrease in the stats.”
To drive home his point Ihme noted there has been a 150 per cent increase in robberies in 2023 compared to the year before, from two in 2022 to five in 2023.
“It's a significant statistical jump, but really it's only three more. The unfortunate part with some of those stats is that one or two people can grossly inflate or deflate those stats,” said Ihme.
Ihme also pointed to the Crime Severity Index for Innisfail, which monitors the severity level of police reported crime, while measuring the overall seriousness of crime from one year to the next by tracking both the prevalence of crime within a community, and the seriousness of the crimes committed.
“We peaked about five, six years ago, and it's been consistently coming down, even when places in the province are going up,” said Ihme, noting Innisfail had a high in 2017. “And we are down 30, 40 per cent since 2017 and to a low we haven't seen since 2015.
“And to put it in comparison we dropped about 10 per cent in crime severity where the national average increased by four per cent and the provincial average increased by two per cent,” said Ihme. “So, the rest of the province is going up as a whole but we're still going down.”
He also noted the RCMP witnessed historical lows with crime during the pandemic years as citizens were having fewer personal interactions from 2020 to 2022, largely due to provincially-mandated restrictions.
“They weren’t going to parties, The bars were not open,” said Ihme. “We’ve kind of just been seeing a slow gradual increase since we’ve been moving away from that but on the other hand we’ve seen a decrease in a lot of property crime, which has been continually going down as well too.”
