Crime is up across the board in Windsor.
Year over year, crimes are up more than 12 per cent.
“Our homicides are up 300 per cent,” says Deputy Chief Brad Hill. “We average three a year, we're up nine this year.”
Police are reluctant to pinpoint one exact cause, but say the ongoing opioid addiction crisis could be a significant contributory, especially to more minor crimes like break and enters.
Hill says a rise in violent crime is especially taxing on the major crimes unit, as they can't add any extra detectives, even though their workload has gone up significantly.
Of the Windsor homicides, Hill says he's proud that all but one of the nine are solved.
“The one that is not solved is the University and Ouellette shooting and that is, I would suggest, transient crime, which is certainly a trend,” says Hill. “Transient crime, where the people come into Windsor to commit a crime who don't necessarily live here, which makes it more difficult to investigate and more difficult to catch the culprits because they're not here any longer.”
So far in 2018 in Windsor, there have been 10 murder investigations, which have resulted in charges in nine homicide cases as well as a charge of manslaughter.
