"Angry" was the word to describe the reaction of North Battleford councillors to a blistering front-page portrayal of the city's crime ranking over the weekend.
They were reacting at Monday night's council meeting to an article in the Saturday, Aug. 17 edition of the StarPhoenix entitled "N.B. seeks solutions to combat crime."
The article had the subheading "highest rates in country," and pointed out North Battleford had topped the Statistics Canada Crime Severity Index ever since its inception.
The StarPhoenix report further claimed "nearly one in three youth in North Battleford was charged with a crime last year," that the adult crime rate was also three times as high, and that the city had the highest rate of non-violent crime in the country.
It cited 2012 Stats Can numbers of 15,193 charges laid per 100,000, 30,218 charges laid against youth per 100,000, 292 incidents of drunk driving, 34 harassment cases and 359 reported drug violations.
The article's portrayal of North Battleford and its dismal crime severity rating was raised by Councillor Greg Lightfoot. He noted that same story had also run in the Calgary Herald, and that he received over 20 emails from clients in Calgary who had read the story.
Lightfoot said they were asking "what's going on in North Battleford? What seems to be the issue there? Why are people not moving out?"
"We're really getting labelled with a bad brush," said Lightfoot.
"Maybe the stats are skewed somehow. I'm not sure if that's correct or not, but I think North Battleford's probably as safe a place as Saskatoon or Regina. But I don't see Saskatoon and Regina in any of those stats."
"It certainly didn't paint us with a good brush in the paper on the weekend. It's a pretty bad article," said Lightfoot.
Acting Battlefords detachment commander Kurt Grabinsky gave a lengthy response. He noted "the statistics are what we all cope with in justifying more resources, in justifying what we do out there.
"Per capita we tend to have more of the property crimes," he said, pointing to the rash of thefts in vehicles that had been going on. "Every single one of those adds up."
Grabinsky also pointed to "the same group re-offending" as another factor in the numbers.
As for what to do, Grabinsky pledged foot patrols and bike patrols, and to use crime reduction methodology and using Sask. Division crime analysts to "work on finding where these crimes are hitting and focusing our energies directly on those rather than random efforts."
Lightfoot also pointed out that most of the stats for 2012 were reported before the establishment of North Battleford's HUB project to address crime and move towards a safer community. Lightfoot also made it known that many of the crimes being reported are property crimes and not violent crimes.
"I think we just have to let the public know this is a pretty safe community," he said.
Councillor Ryan Bater said he recognized the crimes were not particularly violent, but voiced his concerns about how the city was being perceived.
"I always believed this community to be safe, but we can't turn a blind eye to the fact that we're becoming a laughingstock to a lot of people in terms of a community of our size and our location, having a crime rate repeatedly, year after year, topping the lists across the country."
He suggested "taking a serious look at what we are investing in protective services" at budget time, suggesting the City look to "enhance the resources" to make the community safer.
Bater seemed especially frustrated by the amount of crime that continues to go on. He referred to comments made by Councillor Trent Houk at the meeting, who had said he was hit 10 times during the recent wave of vehicle break-ins in the city.
"Everyone here agrees, we all get very angry when we hear about these reports," said Bater. "We get very angry when we hear about our friends and loved ones, like my colleague across the floor being robbed 10 times this summer. We all want something to happen. It's very frustrating."
Bater also urged people to be vigilant. "You can't turn a blind eye to people in the community who are wrongdoers, who seek to do harm to property," he said.
The outgoing director of finance for the city, Matthew Hartney, had further comments about the crime severity rating.
He noted North Battleford was being graded by Stats Can as a population of 14,000, however "we're unique in the fact that we have a much larger service area" of 18-to-20,000 people.
That service area includes the town of Battleford, and several other sizable communities and First Nations close by.
The finance director pointed to the concentration of high schools in the city as another factor.
"What we see in our community, according to Stats Can, is a lot of youth or adolescent crime," said Hartney.
"With North Battleford being the only place in the region that has high schools, that type of activity is attracted to the city, being North Battleford."
Bater concurred, noting that another community - Thompson, Man. - has a very similar circumstance.
Thompson is another community notorious for reports of high StatsCan crime numbers. Bater, Lightfoot and Mayor Ian Hamilton met with the Thompson mayor and officials at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities meeting in June.
"You're attracting a lot of people from the region into the urban area," said Bater.
"All of those crime stats are being pumped into just the Statistics Canada populations. It is a bit unique and I think it's rather unfair, and that's part of what makes me angry about getting these reports that put our city in a bad light."
Councillor Ray Fox, however, called for greater co-ordination. "I don't think pointing fingers at other communities will solve the problem. We need to be able to say this is our problem, and this is how we're going to deal with it here in this community."
Grabinsky did confirm later to the Regional Optimist that the CSI reports the RCMP provide are coded in such a way that only crimes committed within the city are included in the North Battleford statistics.
However, he notes those statistics do not reflect where the perpetrators reside.
