Health and safety in the community is always the number one priority, according to City of Lethbridge Mayor Blaine Hyggen.
Statistics Canada has released its results from the 2023 Crime Severity Index report, as Lethbridge sits at a rating of 144.
As with any reports and the collection of data, Hyggen explains, it’s important to understand the context of that information for the community. “Though we never want to see an increase to our CSI, downward trends over the past few years and year-to-date data for 2024 show we are making positive changes.”
An increase in CSI though, is not solely a policing issue. “Tackling the complex social issues associated with criminal activity requires the collaboration of areas like addictions and mental health, supportive housing, healthcare, the legal system and our own City programs and services to all be contributing toward solutions,” notes Hyggen. “As a City Council, we are proud of the good strides that have been made by City administration and the Lethbridge Police Service in the areas of outreach and prevention.”
Some of these include the Building A Safer Community Fund initiative to prevent gun and gang violence in youth, the community wellbeing call for proposals (currently open until July 31), adding in-house outreach specialists to the City’s encampment response and the Council’s committee and task force work.
“Working closely with LPS, the City’s encampment response has helped minimize entrenched encampments, thereby reducing criminal activity often seen in these areas and reducing the risk and safety to those within our community,” says Hyggen.
According to Hyggen, a lot of challenges came out of the COVID-19 pandemic, including addictions and struggles for residents that lost their jobs and homes. “Working with that has always been a challenge, but not just that. When we see these numbers go up, we need to look at the good work being done.”
LPS Deputy Police Chief Gerald Grobmeier says when reviewing the CSI data, it’s important for residents to understand the Lethbridge data is calculated in two different ways, as a single municipality and as a census metropolitan area, which includes Lethbridge, Coaldale and Picture Butte.
“Prior to 2023, Lethbridge was trending down in CSI. In 2018, our CSI was 161 and by 2022 it had been trending down to 134. During the first four months of 2023, incidents of crime increased and had a significant impact on our CSI,” adds Grobmeier.
In reviewing data and looking ahead to the first six months of 2024, it does appear 2023 was an anomaly. “If things continue as they have been so far this year, we are on track to end 2024 with the lowest CSI levels we’ve had in the past five years. In 2024, we’ve had significant decreases in persons crimes and property crimes – reductions of about 25 per cent.”
“We acknowledge there is much more to be done and a number of challenges to be addressed,” says Grobmeier.
LPS continues to hire more officers and “put more boots on the ground,” notes Grobmeier. “This year, we have hired 26 police officers. We’ve just graduated a cadet class at the beginning of this month and just last week we had a second cadet class starting. We’re also committed to continuing our robust recruiting efforts to keep our numbers up.”
With the influx of hires this year, Grobmeier says, LPS anticipates being in a position in 2025 to start returning officers to the specialty units that were reduced when the budget was cut a few years ago.
“One of the first units that will have officers added is the Downtown Policing Unit. This will allow us to increase our efforts addressing the challenges in our city centre,” says Grobmeier.
The Comstat model is also being utilized by LPS, which uses technology to help identify crime trends and hot spots to effectively drive the deployment of the department’s resources.
