It is actually of comparable size to places like Ottawa, Hamilton and Quebec City where the individual murder counts are I think are quite a bit under 10 so far this year.

Maybe Hamilton and QC, but Ottawa is much bigger (about 30% IIRC). I am curious how Ottawa and QC all have so low of murders, maybe it's because other cities are the big crime cities (Montreal and Toronto) where all the organized crime is based.

It's the wild west out here though. A more indicative comparison would be to the cities in Sask. and Alberta. You will find the murder rate is not that far off when compared strictly within western cities.

Homicide rates (and most other crime rates) are historically quite a bit higher in the western provinces than eastern ones.

The cities of Winnipeg and Ottawa (ie: minus Gatineau) are comparable in size. Calgary is not much bigger. The counts discussed in this thread are mostly for cities, not CMAs. Statistics Canada compiles homicide counts for CMAs, but 2008 data won't be available til 2009. Of course you could try to add up data for all the police jurisdictions within CMAs yourself.

I think the point is that you'd expect (in Canada) 22 murders to be in a much bigger city. It's not a comment on Wpg being small but that one would expect, given its size, for it to have fewer murders.

But as "bad" as Winnipeg might look, Baltimore, with 637,000 people, had 157 murders as of Sept 10. And yes, that's a municipal figure, not a metro one, and there are 4 months' worth of murders to go there.

Toronto has a lower crime rate than Ottawa - last year it was 22% lower. The murder rate is only slightly higher most years.

Weird. I wonder why it is so much higher in the west?

That right there puts everything into perspective. Why is Baltimore so violent?

Not sure as to why, but IIRC, cities like Baltimore, Washington, Miami, and Dallas all had violent crime rates much higher than the cities you think would be high (New York, Detroit etc).

I heard that area is very gang related area, as well as DC area.

US cities like Baltimore have a huge (half of the inner city) underclass of impoverished black people who commit a disproportionately high number of crimes.

Canadian cities just aren't faced with the same scale of problem. Partly this is because there were stronger social programs and there was less abandonment of cities but mostly it comes down to not having had a slavery-driven plantation economy 150 years ago.

Some cities in Canada have analogous but smaller social issues but they haven't managed to do much better with them. The rest never had to deal with much. As a result of this, I don't think it makes sense to talk as if cities with lower crime rates are somehow better managed.

It should be "Why is America so violent?"
Just look at NYC and LA

NYC and LA have murder rates well under 10/100,000. NY's is comparable to western Canadian cities. But thats only homicide, other violent crime and property crimes are lower in these two cities than in many major Canadian ones.

EDIT: Actually, unless they are calculated differently, New York's violent crime rate is lower than any Canadian CMA.

I'm not sure but I seem to recall reading somewhere that they are calculated differently. Although I may just be confusing that with low income.

US and Canadian composite rates are COMPLETELY different and CANNOT be compared- only individual crime types can be compared, and then with the caveat that the US labels crimes differently and does not have one federal criminal code.

"Violent crime rate" in the US ONLY comprises the most serious crimes of murder, first-degree sexual assault, armed robbery, and aggravated assault. Canada's includes SIMPLE assault, which is about 80% of all violent crime. Basically, to compare US and Canadian composite "violent crime rates," first reduce the Canadian rate by 80% and you might come close to comparing apples to apples.

Oh boy, here we go again.

CMA of approx. 700,000 and 1,000,000 aren't all that much different.

Calgary isn't that big, either.

^ LOL, and unlike Ottawa's CMA, Winnipeg's doesn't take in the western side of Quebec.

Terrible week in Pikangikum. The first story is a murder from last year.

Although Ottawa and Gatineau are part of the same CMA, crime statistics such as murder for each city are never grouped together to give a “metro” total of murders.

looking at the crime stats winnipeg is still sitting at 22 and is sitting right were it was this ime last year