Crime in Ottawa
 

Are you concerned about the upward trend in violence?

Is it much ado about nothing?

Are most people too blasé about it?

Is enough being done?

Post from the Canadian cities homicide thread:

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...postcount=3364

Is there an upward trend? I haven't seen year-on-year numbers. I don't know if I'd consider myself "blasé" about it, but my sense is that if I'm not involved in illicit drug or gang activities, and exercise common sense wrt my personal security, my chances of becoming a victim of violent crime in Ottawa are very slight.

In 1998, the Ontario portion of the Ottawa-Hull CMA had the 14th-highest violent crime rate of 25 CMAs (counting the Quebec side as a separate CMA).

In 2016, Ottawa ranked 31st-highest out of 33. Only Sherbrooke and Windsor (!?!!) had lower violent crime rates.

Between 1998 and 2016, Ottawa had a lower rate of violent crime than Canada as a whole, and lower than the average of all metropolitan areas, every single year, and it was below the Ontario rate in all but three years.

And Ottawa's violent crime rate, like that almost everywhere in the country, is continuing a decades-long downward slope.

There's a weird paradox in many developed countries, that the more the crime rate goes down, the more people become obsessed with, and worry about, crime.

Data source: Statscan CANSIM Table 252-0051, Incident-based crime statistics, by detailed violations

Where crime is commonplace it ceases to make the news because it's not out of the ordinary. People get accustomed to it, and it just becomes background noise. It's only reported on the back page of the newspaper, if at all, unless its particularly horrendous.

Where crime rates are low, every instance of extreme violence is newsworthy, making the front page every time. This brings it to everybody's attention and it seems like it's occurring more often, when it's actually not.

It's a form of a media bias, I think.

The last two posts say it all.

Another (possible) thing is the mismatch between raw number and risk.

Say, in the generally safe city of Poopville, in 1980 there were 26 murders in a population of 750,000. That's two murders a month that the local press and public had to talk about.

In 2018, Poopville's population has reached 1.75-million. The number of murders has "jumped" to 52, one a week. Is Poopville more dangerous now than in the "good old days"? Nope! The murder rate, as measured as a share of population per year, has actually declined.

Regardless of whether violent crime is down (which is mostly robberies), the homicide rate has been high in recent years compared to what it had been a few years ago. 15 last year, 24 the year before, compared to under 10 in the previous few years.

That's a good point. Bank robberies (and to a lesser degree corner store/gas station robberies) have all but disappeared as a criminal activity compared to what they once were not that long ago.

Including because the value of such crimes have decreased. Hardly anybody carries much cash anymore, most businesses keep little in the till. Combined with surveillance cameras fewer people are finding such crimes are worth the risk.

Valid point... but how much of that is "gang" related? For many of the murders (this years new one included), it seems to be young people "known to police" killing each other. :shrug:

The "no big deal - it's just gangbangers killing each other off" attitude hasn't always produced good results.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=stray...w=1536&bih=690

I was in no way trying to insinuate this was "no big deal".... I get your point. I was trying to state that crime is becoming more and more "compartmentalized".

In other words, the point is "random" crime appears to be steadily decreasing.

It's in all of our interest to see all violence (including gangster-on-gangster) reduced to a minimum, as one never knows how and when it can spill over and hurt the totally innocent.

One of my best friends visiting from out of town walked right by this shooting location with his two preschoolers, half an hour before they left the mall to come to dinner at my place.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa...ting-1.2884529

I agree. We learned in Toronto that feuds that started in housing projects ended up at the Eaton Centre.