Acting Police Chief Shawn Devine reports North Bay's Crime Severity Index rating to members of the North Bay Police Services Board on Tuesday morning. Due to two murder and three attempted murder cases 2013, North Bay moved up in the national ranking. PHOTO BY LIAM BERTI
Due to an increase in violent crime in 2013, North Bay's ranking in the national Crime Severity Index is slightly higher than years past.
According to the overall Crime Severity Index, which ranks towns compared to all other surveyed police forces, North Bay ranked 145 out of 304 reporting police services for 2013.
A ranking of one represents a community that reported the most frequent and serious crime, while a ranking of 304 represents the community that reported the least amount. In other words, a low score equals a high rank.
Some of the force-multiplying factors that caused the increase include the North Bay Police Service investigating two murder cases last year as well as three attempted murders.
“When you’re at zero and then all of a sudden those scores increase by one or two, we knew that the crime severity was going to be increased,” said Acting Police Chief Shawn Devine. “But we’re still within that medium range within the country.”
According to the report, those two crimes carry the more serious statistical value in the index. In 2012, the North Bay Police Service had zero charges in those two categories.
During the North Bay Police Services board meeting on Tuesday morning, Mayor Al McDonald prompted Devine with the question “are we finding that our community is safer?” Without hesitation, Devine reassured the Mayor that yes, North Bay is truly a safe place.
In his board report, Acting Chief Devine said “North Bay remains a safe place to live, work and play with a low frequency in most areas of violent crime and high solvency rate in all areas.”
The rating is part of a report prepared each year by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics and uses an index to rate police services in Canada who police at least one urban area with a population over 10,000.
According to the organization, the mandate of the index is to create a measure that would provide a more meaningful indicator of change in police-reported crime from year-to-year, all while comparing the relative seriousness of each offence.
More serious crimes carry a higher weight than less serious crimes, reducing the impact of high-volume, less serious offences in order to show the general frequency of severe crimes.
Devine said that while moving two points higher in the Crime Severity Index is never a good thing, there is still a positive to be taken out of the statistics. He said the closure rates of all those cases was 100 per cent, including charges being applied in the murder and attempted murder cases.
“If there is a good news story to this, the closure rates on those are 100 per cent, so in those five cases we did charge people,” Devine explained. “This isn’t a case where we have somebody in our community that is unknown to the police.”
Included in the report are two other index ratings. In the Violent Crime Severity Index, North Bay was 73.38 compared to the national average score of 73.70, a 10 per cent increase from the year prior. That score ranked 78 out of the 304 indexed forces.
In the Non-violent Crime category, North Bay was given a 56.06 compared to 66.76 throughout the country, good enough for a rank of 181 out of 304.
Overall, North Bay’s Overall Crime Severity Index score was 60.78 compared to the national average of 68.72.
In 2013, 906 adults and 84 youths were charged, down 4.2 and 24.3 per cent respectively from the year before.
Check BayToday soon for a follow up article on the continuing issue of domestic violence rates in North Bay.