Windsor has seen an increase in the Crime Severity Index from 2016 to 2017, according to Statistics Canada.
The StatsCan report measured the volume and severity of crimes reported to police.
Windsor’s Crime Severity Index was up seven per cent with a score of 71.7.
It’s the third consecutive increase in Windsor after an 11-year decline in the index.
Windsor Deputy Chief Brad Hill defends the city as a safe place to live.
“We are experiencing an increase in crime like most cities across Canada,” says Hill. “Windsor is a safe city and certainly safer than a lot of other cities.”
There were more than 4,000 crimes reported to police in 2017, a six per cent increase over 2016. Of note, the number of robberies jumped by 23 per cent while police investigated 20 per cent more sexual assault incidents.
Lydia Fiorini, the executive director of the Sexual Assault Crisis Centre in Windsor, feels the ‘Me Too’ movement could have played a role in the increase.
“It is obviously giving a lot of people permission to come forward and finally disclose what's happened to them and we're seeing that even here at the centre,” says Fiorini. “People are coming in, they're finally saying ‘I have a voice, I should be using my voice.”
The national crime rate rose one per cent, while the police-reported CSI increased two per cent.
Despite the increase, Canada's crime rate last year was still 24 per cent below where it was a decade earlier.
Feeding into that increase is more reporting of sexual assault cases to police, and investigators themselves taking a second look at historical cases in the wake of greater public scrutiny of sexual harassment and assault.
Last year in Canada, 14 per cent of sexual assaults reported to police were given the "unfounded" classification, down from 19 per cent in 2016. The figure is double the seven per cent of unfounded cases identified among all criminal incidents in Canada last year.
With files from The Canadian Press.
