Crime rates jump in northeast Winnipeg

But police say it willl come down

Crime rates are dropping this year in all areas of Winnipeg – except the northeast section of the city.

“We seem to have one little piece that’s stubborn and the trend is going the other way,” Deputy Chief Menno Zacharias said.

According to police statistics, crime rose six per cent in District 4 between Jan. 1 and Oct. 21, 2007. The district covers Transcona, North Kildonan, East Kildonan and Elmwood.

The majority of crimes in the district are committed in Elmwood, Zacharias said.

“The people in District 4 have been doing a lot of really good work in terms of eliminating many car thefts around the shopping centres and I am confident they are going to get this under control,” he said.

Although residential break-ins fell by six per cent from 446 to 418 in District 4, other kinds of break-ins bumped the total break and enter rate by 20 per cent, from 752 in 2006 to 901 in 2007.

Many of those break-ins took place in buildings other than a house or commercial business – a garage for example.

Those break-ins skyrocketed from 172 in 2006 to 311 in 2007. This was an 81-per-cent increase.

This category also jumped significantly in other parts of the city as well, but Zacharias isn’t sure why.

“It does not seem to be an increase we can account for,” he said adding that it may be the way the statistics are being reported.

Sexual assaults went down 28 per cent from 47 to 34 cases, and robberies rose from 172 in 2006 to 198 in 2007.

Auto theft went down across the city, including the northeast. In 2006, there were 1,577 stolen cars in District 4, compared with 1,555 in 2007.

“With that one we are fairly confident we are showing a meaningful difference because of the size of the numbers,” said Zacharias.

He attributes the drop in car thefts to the Winnipeg Auto Theft Suppression Strategy (WATSS), a program run by police, Manitoba Justice, the RCMP and Manitoba Public Insurance.

“We are very specifically identifying who our city’s top-100 car thieves are,” he said.

The targeted car thieves are subject to curfew checks and active surveillance. Zacharias said they are arrested if they don’t follow probation orders.

“It’s a multi-pronged approach we have been using to finally bring the auto theft down, and I think we are finally starting to see that happen,” said Zacharias.

Brian Smiley, spokesperson for Manitoba Public Insurance, agrees that getting high-risk car thieves off the street has made a difference.

“We’ve found that when the higher-risk car thieves are in jail there’s a decline,” he said.

MPI has identified more than 300 people across the city deemed most at risk of stealing a car.

The majority of them are youths.

Smiley said some kids steal 40 to 50 cars a month, so getting them off the street is a good way to cut theft.