Mayor Bill Mauro has
gone public in his calls for help in dealing with crime in Thunder Bay. In reports by Thunder
Bay Television and the Chronicle-Journal,
the Mayor has called on the federal and provincial governments for
assistance in dealing with the spike in violent crime that is afflicting Thunder
Bay. The City of Thunder Bay is hard
pressed to deal with the financial impact on the police budget of the recommendations
made by the Office
of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) to deal with systemic
racism and now the spike in gang-related violent drug crime that is underway.
Thunder Bay is
experiencing a surge in violent crime that has been underway for a number of
years. While overall crime rates are down in Thunder Bay as shown by overall
traditional crime rates as well as the Crime Severity index, violent crimes are
up. As Figure 1 below shows, overall crime as measured by the Crime Severity
Index (Source: Statistics Canada) has fallen from a peak of 126.25 in 1998 to
reach 88.25 in 2017. Violent crime,
however is at 145.81 in 2017 and was 122.62 in 1998. When linear trends are fitted to the data,
violent crime has been trending up over time while overall crime severity has
been trending down with non-violent crime severity quite flat.
Nowhere is the issue of violent crime more apparent in Thunder Bay than in the case of homicides which in 2019 already total 4 – with a fifth just outside of town. In 2017, Thunder Bay lead the country’s cities in homicides per 100,000 and 2018 saw 8 homicides which is likely to result in Thunder Bay once again topping the national urban homicide rates. If one uses a City population of 107,910 then for 2018 one gets an estimated homicide rate of 7.4 per 100,000 population for 2018. If the four murders in the city limits during the first quarter of the year alone are an indication of what is to come this year, a spike to 16 homicides this year would result in a homicide rate of 14.8 per 100,000 population for 2019. Figure 2 plots Thunder Bay’s homicide rate from 1998 to 2017 (Source: Statistics Canada) and then adds my estimates for 2018 and 2019 based on the evidence to date.
While violent crime can disproportionately affect the indigenous community, there is also what seems to be a surge in external gangs from outside the city and a battle over drug market share driving up the violent crime rate. Dealing with this does require more policing resources but a blanket call for more cash for the City of Thunder Bay is unlikely to generate much of a response from either the province or Ottawa. What might be better is more policing resources dedicated to reducing the flow of this external crime to Thunder Bay.
Given its strategic
position in the middle of the country as a transshipment point, Thunder Bay is
actually a choke point for transportation – as in ancient Rome, all roads lead
to Thunder Bay. The travel options to
get to us are also fairly easy to track given they converge here. For outside criminals to come and do business
here there are really only four options to get either themselves or their assorted
criminal products here: 1) by car, 2) by air, 3) by rail and 4) by water – at least
during shipping season. My point is that
the first line of offense needs to be working with external policing forces to raise
the cost of doing criminal business in Thunder Bay by raising the probability
of criminals getting caught.
Essentially, at the provincial
level more OPP officers and resources need to be deployed on the highways immediately
leading into and outside of Thunder Bay.
More frequent stops of vehicles on the highways that seem suspicious
would be one way of interrupting the flow of drugs and criminals to Thunder
Bay. Indeed, the ramped up impaired driving
laws might be of some use here.
A stronger RCMP
presence in the City at the airport, rail yards and waterfront (especially during
shipping season) and at the Pigeon River border to check for suspicious
shipments with co-ordination of information on potential suspicious behavior with
border officials, airport security in other Ontario cities, and railway police is
yet another strategy.
Perhaps such an enhanced
crime interception and disruption strategy is already underway in Thunder Bay
with cooperation between local, provincial and federal police forces in
conjunction with airport, border and transportation company officials. I would
expect no less. On the other hand, given the dysfunctional
attributes of our current federation, I would suspect that there is still much work to be done