Most categories of crimes against people are down through the first 10 months of this year in Thompson compared to 2021, an RCMP report to council shows.
The notable exception is homicides, which are up five from 2021, when there were none. There were two each in 2020 and 2019.
Year-to-date, assaults, domestic assaults and sexual assaults are all down, while break-and-enters, thefts and provincial traffic offences are up. The latter is likely due to increased enforcement as the detachment’s dedicated traffic officer was assigned to other duties for part of 2021.
October’s RCMP statistics were presented to council by Staff Sgt. Shane Flanagan, who had been the detachment’s acting officer-in-charge, a role now being filled by Insp. Damon Werrell, who also attended the Dec. 5 committee of the whole meeting.
Werrell said he has served with the RCMP for 21 years in 10 postings, including six where he was the officer in charge. He previously oversaw the Shamattawa and Island Lake detachment and has about five-and-a-half years of service in Manitoba, along with nine in British Columbia and seven-and a-half in the Northwest Territories.
“I wanted to come back,” Werrell said. “I knew what I was getting into when I asked to come back to Thompson.”
Flanagan said October saw a large increase in theft calls over September, mainly the result of two people, and that there was also a homicide, which required a lot of investigative resources. The 10th month of the year also saw significant drug and weapons seizures.
“Just prior to the [municipal] election, we had a variety of shootings happen in the city,” Flanagan said. “These are directly related. These seizures are as a result of that.”
Thompson RCMP officers spent 29 hours in October waiting at the hospital with patients suffering mental health issues, which equates to about $10,000 worth of overtime. Police also respond often to calls about people in need of medical care who have left the hospital without being discharged.
“It’s our job to go find them and take them back for care because obviously it’s a detriment to their health,” Flanagan said. “There was three for the month of October and 21 thus far this year.”
Deputy mayor Kathy Valentino, who was chairing the meeting, asked Flanagan if there had been fewer people trying to stay warm in the hospital emergency room in October as a result of the healing centre opening up and providing more room to house people with nowhere else to stay on extremely cold nights.
“There’s less disturbance calls in the TGH related to that,” Flanagan said.
The trend of fewer crimes against people this year compared to last was common across the RCMP’s north district, which encompasses everything in Northern Manitoba from Grand Rapids to the Nunavut boundary. There were 10 per cent fewer crimes against persons in Northern Manitoba this October compared to one year earlier while property crimes and drug crimes were up. The only category of crimes against persons that was higher in Northern Manitoba this October than last was offences related to death, which were up 100 per cent, from three in 2021 to six this October.
There were no fatal motor vehicle collision in Northern Manitoba in October, but 60 per cent of that month’s non-fatal serious collisions in area policed by the RCMP — six out of 10 — occurred in the north.
