When it comes to police resources on the street, Greater Victoria continues to lag behind the national and provincial average, according to new statistics from the Vital Signs report, released today by the Victoria Foundation.
The region has 24 per cent fewer officers than the national average. Its level of 152 officers per 100,000 people is below the national and provincial averages of 199 and 192 officers per 100,000, respectively. It also represents a drop from 155 officers per 100,000 in 2011.
Victoria police said in a statement the figures do not mean residents in the Victoria area are less safe.
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MORE ON THE VITAL SIGNS SURVEY:
- Cost of living is top concern of region’s residents: Vital Signs survey
- Vital Signs: Economic impact of arts and culture on the rise; number of artists declines
- Vital Signs: C is for capital’seconomy
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Victoria police’s caseload — the number of criminal cases per officer — is 19 per cent higher than the B.C. average and 67 per cent higher than the national average.
When it comes to safety, the report gave Greater Victoria a B grade.
In a survey this year of business operators, 86 per cent said the downtown core is safe during the day and 48 per cent said the downtown core is safe at night, up from 39 per cent in 2010.
Greater Victoria’s crime severity index for 2012 was 63.7 per cent, lower than the provincial and national averages of 89.3 per cent and 81.4 per cent, respectively. The crime severity index is a formula adopted by Statistics Canada to measures the seriousness of crime in a community.
The rate of sexual assaults dropped in 2012 to 37.2 per 100,000 from 47.6 in 2011. That’s below the provincial and national averages of 56.1 and 62.9, respectively.
There was a rise in the number of children in need of protection to 8.6 per 1,000 in 2011 — the most recent figures available — up from 6.3 in 2009.
