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SATURDAY, JANUARY 22, 2011
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◗ CRIME IN THE CITY
Criminals didn’t take a break
City criminals didn’t take a Christmas vacation – in fact they just got busier BY ALFIE LAU REPORTER alau@royalcityrecord.com
It had all the makings of a great year of crime decreases in the Royal City. But then December happened. December 2010 saw a 41 per cent increase in the number of Criminal Code offences, with 510 total offences during the month. In December 2009, there were 362 offences. “The year was going along smoothly until we hit the month of December,” said Deputy Chief Dave Jones. “December was a very busy month with robberies, assaults, property crime and another homicide. “But we do have to keep in mind that overall, for the entire year, we are still down three per cent.” The numbers bear witness to Jones’ claim, as there were 5,560 total Criminal Code offences in 2010, or 161 fewer than the 5,721 recorded in 2009. If not for the December spike, the overall numbers would have been down six per cent overall. Across individual categories of crime, the largest increase came in theft from auto, where December 2010 saw 106 instances, up 172 per cent from the December 2009 total of 39. Overall, theft from auto increased 15 per cent from 2009 to 2010, going from 730 to 839. Another large increase came in drug offences, which were up 21 per cent overall from 2009 to 2010, with 273 offences in 2009 and 331 offences in 2010. The largest decreases came in breakand-enters, where the overall 2010 figure of 462 is 25 per cent less than the 618 break-and-enters in 2009. ◗Crime Page 4
Now you see it, now you don’t
Photos by Larry Wright and Benny Birovchak/THE RECORD
Snow returns: Above, Sue Olson was out with her dog Lady. Below, a car that couldn’t stop on York Street and ended up in a home on East Seventh Avenue.
BY ALFIE LAU REPORTER alau@royalcityrecord.com
Benny Birovchak thought it was somebody knocking on his door at 7:45 a.m. Wednesday morning. But it wasn’t a person that caused a commotion on East Seventh Avenue after a car going down York Street was unable to stop and crashed into the house of one of Birovchak’s neighbours. “York Street is quite steep and it ends at Seventh so it looks like a guy came down a bit too fast, it was icy and he ended up in the house.” Thankfully, the man was able to get out of the car himself and was already on the phone when Birovchak looked out his window and started snapping pictures of the accident. “This isn’t the first time somebody’s come down York and couldn’t stop,” said Birovchak, a longtime resident of the area. “I remember once during Expo (‘86), a big Winnebago came down and couldn’t stop. … There used to be a fire hydrant here that they had to move.”
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Birovchak said he was surprised as everybody else that the morning’s weather included snow. “We’ve got at least an inch right now,” Birovchak said at 10 a.m. Thursday. “It’s still coming down pretty hard. … I think we’ll be close to a couple of inches soon.” But it didn’t last long. By nightfall most of the snow had been washed away by rain, and more rain followed that through the rest of the week.