Crime in Manitoba

It isn't just in Winnipeg that crime has taken a new turn. Armed gangs at farms have got rural folk scared. By it's very definition it is organized crime and based on the weapons they are carrying would be a threat to any who encountered them. Meanwhile in the city, murder continues to take place sometimes two times in a day. The police have been quick to make arrests in some of those which is good. The murder suspects are remanded.

Winnipeg continues to have to deal with arson. Vacant properties take too long to find new purpose and sometimes end up burned down. The wreckage takes forever to clear and then the empty lot stays that way for decades as no one wants to risk putting something up. This is what is happening to north Main where large tracts are knocked down.

A nascent national housing strategy of house building has begun. It is early stages but we have seen more houses, townhouses, duplexes and apartments go up all over. A change to student visas has seen major drops of temporary students nation-wide. The lack of housing support post secondary intuitions provided and the wide open work that was allowed for students made this inevitable. 

It is possible we may see changes to the student visa applications that put more onus on colleges providing for or arranging for housing as well as restricted work schedules for students. Some schools like University of Winnipeg have been great at building new housing. The University of Manitoba has been terrible. As it is, the shortage of affordable housing has meant more people on the street.

More than 30 years of homelessness, an increase in the potency of addictive drugs and cost of living going up has been a deadly combination. This combination of things and a whole lot more have contributed to thefts from stores not seen before, behaviour that is belligerent and sometimes violent and often with no seeming consequences. A lot of it is driven by drugs which proliferate more today than any jurisdiction seems to be able to get a handle on.

Winnipeg Police said in 2024 that they need 78 more officers. The service has asked for this while buying a new helicopter, artificial intelligence and robot dogs. The 1,300 officers generally make more than 100,000 and retirements for full pensions start shortly after 50 years old. The budget for Winnipeg Police is the largest line item with over $300 million a year in the city budget. 

Police themselves say better security comes from not just having 78 more police on the streets. It requires more social and law reform, better housing, prison changes and social assistance which hasn't changed in years. Pierre Poilievre has introduced three strikes you are out with 10 years in prison as an election policy. That is one solution. It isn't the only one. Certainly violent offenders cannot keep offending. And repeat offenders need to know their freedom is at stake for petty crime that never stops. But three strikes ended up with prisons bursting at the seams in the states and costing a lot of money.

As for rural police, the provincial NDP have assigned money for more tactical officers, more communications officers and more civilians to the the tune of millions. The PCs have called it as a distraction when the RCMP is so short of constables. It is important to remember they were short under the Stefanson government as well. This is a problem that needs fixing and it will probably take all parties working on it.

The violence happening in hospitals is unacceptable. Nurses, doctors and patients are all in far too much danger. And it isn't just the case of downtown hospitals. There is security at hospitals but clearly more needs to be done. Scanning stations, cameras, patrols and safety audits to ensure there are places that are not security issues.

If people continue to have cars and homes broken into, houses burned down, witness theft from stores every leaves parts of the city defeated and prepared to leave if no action is taken. It isn't normal carrying knives everywhere and using them all the time. Or guns. Those are choices people make. 

Addictions centers are still too few and too long to wait for. Overdoses are frequent due to the strength of the drugs and the many things that end up being mixed in there. Too many places are drug houses or drug distribution centers. Encampments crop up because the people there are sometimes too high and violent to spend night in a shelter. 

The plan to address one encampment after another is a good one if it gets people into housing, assigns a case worker to them and results if a site clean up and frequent follow-up that an encampment doesn't keep popping up. None of this works with backsliding. So much difficulty begins when there is not consistent transition work. If the goal is to reduce police involvement, it means zero tolerance for violence. 

The provincial government is looking to set up a safe injection site but it could be that those going to the site are vulnerable to violence or prone to violence. The issue of what happens to the areas where a site is set up suggests that schools, daycares should not be in proximity. Those same rules apply to cannabis and liquor stores as well. There is already a mobile unit that is in Winnipeg. One wonders if trying to place a site in a place in a city as widespread as Winnipeg is useful or safe.

There won't be one perfect approach to crime in Manitoba. Some of it will be to continue support for community services and school for young people so that they have safe places and good influences. Some of the good news is that cigarette smoking is way down, alcohol consumption down and this reflected in fewer bars as people just don't drink as much and smoking is fairly restricted in where it can be done and where product can be purchased. 

In past crime spikes, they were dealt with by identifying the most most brazen such as multiple arsons, violent offenses or repeat offenses by getting them off the streets. They were remanded and dealt with by the courts. Rehabilitation is possible but only with good supports and that means parole, probation, transition housing, drug and alcohol monitoring and job training and placement. It makes no sense to discharge someone who has no supports and is in a strange city. It is a recipe for disaster as we have seen.

And lastly, Stony Mountain is the oldest federal penitentiary in Canada and one where inmates die at all too frequent rate. It is very likely in need of replacing. Headingley Correctional is also a very old prison that has had it's share of unrest. If rehabilitation is to take place, it can't be without supports, addictions programs and not solitary confinement for days on end.

The way to beat crime is to raise the level of self sufficiency in society. In the past that was a very large middle income for the greatest amount of people. If there are extreme poverty levels, it crushes many people's commitment to the social order. No amount of police can control millions without jobs, homes and food. It is something to keep in mind on forming policy on crime. It isn't just crime. It is about well being.

 

Top 10 Most Wanted in Manitoba

There have top 10 wanted lists for crime almost as long as Manitoba has been around. The Winnipeg Police Service and RCMP have finally put a website with the top 10. Crime Stoppers has gotten an increased amount of money to give to those sending in tips. And police say it is working. The Manitoba Integrated Violent Offenders Apprehension Unit has been doing very well according to their own spokesmen.

Social media is a powerful tool for police to inform and apprehend suspects. They will need to be doing more, not less of this to successfully bring down crime. This involves various apps and not just Facebook. The top ten is great for violent criminals but just as much needs to be done in a timely fashion for petty crime.

The police mentioned that some people turned themselves in rather than appearing in the top 10 profile too long where people saw them. They didn't like that. For some they wouldn't care but it is useful to inform the public. One constant complaint is how police never inform people. 

In some cases it might hurt because the community is helping to hide someone. However, information can dry up completely leaving police with only getting tips from residents. 

The new top 10 list is already leading to apprehension of suspects. The people on the list are not just released. Many have enough charges of a serious nature that they are taken off the street.

Further changes provincially and federally are being enacted on parole and sentencing. A federal prisons such as Stony Mountain is the oldest in Canada.

Some say Winnipeg needs more cops but they are also working 50,000 extra hours a year for private organizations. It would not hurt to examine use of police and hiring for police special events. A lot of resources go into the police force and it is added to pensionable hours. Many police are retired by 50 and the age keeps going down. The police love these extra jobs but it may not be the best for the taxpayer.

The truth is we need a variety of security measures and not all of them involve police. An investigation by Manitoba Veterinary Office was turned over to the police. They laid the information in police hands and they got the legal supports to carry out search and arrests of two people responsible for the cruelty and death of cats. This is how things should work. Much of the legwork can be done by other bodies.

The gathering of video evidence and other security work need not be done by police but civilians. And managing websites of crime can be done by others.  The cruising crowd has attracted some motorcycle clubs and large crowds on Sundays. Signs of gone up in the Princess Auto parking lot which have been ignored. Police are near non-existent. So the most recent Sunday, uniformed security has taken over the lot. 

Private security has risen everywhere and the NDP provincial government has increased the money for private companies to buy alarm systems. However, even high security places like Polo Park can have issues from people despite cameras and patrols. Places like Polo Park can ban people and you see more and more of that but then it means those individuals can be out other places causing trouble.

Ultimately, only the police can get the violent offenders off the street and the Top 10 list helps a lot. It will be tips that do the job more often rather than relying on older, less reliable data. Confidence in the system will only be restored when people can see evidence of dangerous people removed out of their community.

Manhunt Over

Another mass killing in Canada and a whole lot of grief in Saskatchewan. The result was a manhunt where the names of the suspects were released early and an alert given by the RCMP with critical data instead of a sleepy Tweet. The alert spread to neighbouring provinces as they depth of the dead and injured became known and EMS helicopters flew to major trauma centres and RCMP tactical squads headed north.

RCMP disclosures were faster and this was probably in response to the mass shooting in Nova Scotia which was confusing and dangerous and led to far more deaths. The inquiry that is ongoing there is horrifying to follow. If the warnings the RCMP gave in Saskatchewan helped avoid more killings then this is a good thing. 

A death in custody is not a great thing especially when you see police handcuffing the suspect. An autopsy will reveal if an overdose took place but so many questions left unanswered and we are not likely to hear from independent investigators with any immediacy. Police still need a chronology which is within their purview, especially if there are those who criminally gave aid and comfort to the killers before, during or after what happened. 

Only an inquiry will probably be able to assess what led to the killings, the parole violations, the nature of the targeted attacks, the reasons the brothers worked together or in the end, turned on one another and the police response as the manhunt began.

For the moment now, let us just give the broadest sympathy and support to the families of those lost and hurt in this attack. The victims of these crimes need to know they won't be forgotten.

Crime and Safety in Winnipeg 2022 Part 4

 

So what will work in short term, medium term and long term to make Winnipeg safer and have less crime? In the past, short term solutions have been to look at patterns of crime and for the police to pour resources into them. In the 1990s when things were very bad, the police and fire departments set up an arson task force. It was slow to set up, took a while to get going but eventually offenders were caught and arsons went down. Likewise, a car theft task force was set and repeat car thieves were caught and it went down as those who would not stop took on longer and longer sentences.

These things don't happen in a vacuum though. Before manufactured ignition locks people in Winnipeg used steering wheel locks, got alarms and along with the police task force, car thefts went down. From a police perspective good intelligence is needed to stay vigilant. The issues of stolen goods and pawn shops in the 1970s and 1980s saw various rules and laws put in place to root out the worst fronts for organized crime. Various studies have shown that a lot of the decline in property crime from the 1990s on was the result of it being harder to steal to cars or break into buildings.

Today, valuable car parts and printable guns could use an assist from provincial and federal levels by marking them for ID or making them illegal. Inspections of metal yards to determine providence. Record keeping and the ability to track down sales and customers. And consequences for stolen goods such as forfeiture of business. If someone has catalytic converters and there is no providence of how the parts came to be at a the shop, arrests and forfeiture of business should result. Likewise, bike parts, copper and car parts at a metal shop should al be traceable. The province of Manitoba has a private members bill to put serial numbers on converters only for the government to vote it down and re-introduce it. It is an intolerable waste of time and shows a lack of urgency.

A renewed effort is needed to make it harder to steal cars, break into cars and carjack cars. Serial numbers on parts, engine immobilizers, GPS emergency tracking, automatic door locks and alarms should be standard features. Metal recyclers need video record keeping and paperwork to prove providence of material and regular police or inspector visits. This would help with copper and bike thefts as well for metal sales. The above would certainly help police. For example, a carjacked car might be able to be shut down safely and police could apprehend suspects. Or a metal shop with a whole bunch of unaccounted for catalytic converters gets shut down and breaks the chain for people who steal them not having a market to sell them.

It should not be assumed that punishment is more effective than prevention. Punishment is not needed if the crime was prevented from happening in the first place! Federal and provincial governments can certainly assist in some of the above mention measures. Better border, port and postal inspections would help. It seems our federal Public Safety Ministers have been tied up with RCMP issues for years whether it is treatment of women, poor training, and a host of other things. Of particular concern is that that the RCMP has a job vacancy rate of over 4% and Manitoba has one of the worst job placements in Canada. It can be frustrating going from one crisis to another underpowered.

Winnipeg RCMP Forensic Lab To Close

RCMP Forensic Lab to Close on Academy Road


It can be barely seen from its location on Academy Road from the street level but the forensic lab for the RCMP has been tucked in River Heights since 1986. The parking lot there was recently upgraded for the 20 to 30 who work in the building.

The federal Conservative government led by Stephen Harper now sees fit to close the lab which has had a presence in Manitoba since 1970. It is the same lab that provincial Progressive Conservatives under Manitoba Provincial Attorney General Sterling R. Lyon requested the province get to handle its forensic needs.

The lab has survived budget cuts under Mulroney, Chretien and Martin but now under Harper with massive increases in crime legislation, the office gets the cut.

The Auditor General has indicated turn around time has been terrible at the labs but there has been a dramatic increase for their service at the same time.

The Harper government was toying with the idea of privatizing the labs. The plan now is to reduce the six offices to three. Ontario and Quebec have their own provincial labs yet the feds kept Ottawa's office along with Edmonton and Vancouver. The labs that will close are in Winnipeg, Halifax and Regina.

Some defence attorneys are already saying wait times are too long for lab reports. It is hard to see the proof that consolidating the labs and increasing the workload with more crime legislation is going to see an improvement in turn around time.

It is obvious that if evidence has to be flown or driven to Edmonton or Ottawa, it will cost more. The $3.5 million savings might be eaten up in rising logistics cost.

The Manitoba government and opposition have been notably silent so far on the loss of a the lab, high tech jobs and what it means to the province.

The three provinces affected by the closures are small and their pleas for consideration are likely to be ignored given that two of the provinces have NDP governments. The third, Saskatchewan, has a conservative government so it might be interesting to see if there is pushback there that gains traction.

In any event, it is difficult to see how Manitoba can avoid seeing the lab close with a majority Harper government in Ottawa.

My personal view is that the government needs to try to keep the lab. However, if they can't keep the lab a federal responsibility that the Manitoba government take it over themselves.

Yes, you heard that correctly. Given the extreme difficulties of the RCMP over the years. it is high time we considered our own provincial police force. I say grab the lab and do as much forensic work for the entire province here and offer services to private and police interests world-wide.

Sound far fetched? Well, as far fetched as a mint in Winnipeg making coinage for other countries?

Don't take the lab closure sitting down. Either fight it or grab it. However, don't hang the gone fishing sign up while federal services continue to get chopped and then shrug later on when you have an empty building, continued slow turn around on evidence and ultimately no answers on what to do.

It is time we had our own provincial police force and it will need a lab. The Academy Road lab is modern and ready to go. Let's start with that and then move to create a police service for Manitoba.

I have a suggestion: Call it the Northwest Mounted Police.

Taman Inquiry Aftermath

The Taman Inquiry listed its final recommendations. The government went one further and asked the RCMP to take over the troubled East St. Paul Police Service.

When Commissioner Roger Salhany said the force bungled the investigation, it was the final straw for the government. The NDP's Dave Chomiak as Justice minister saw fit to torpedo the whole department.

While some in both the Winnipeg and East St. Paul Police have a lot to answer for, the turnover of the East St. Paul Police to the RCMP is probably wrongheaded. Certainly East St. Paul needs reform but the RCMP is likely not to be as responsive for future needs and it is probably going to be more expensive in the end.

The Commissioner's report had many other things to say. The Taman family feels vindicated but it is still a sad that it took this long to bring some action.

The one problem with the government's response is that it might not solve anything and in fact, might make it worse.



myspace hit counter