At the April 27 Bradford West Gwillimbury/Innisfil Police Services Board meeting, South Simcoe Deputy Police Chief John Van Dyke provided the board with an update on crime for the month of March.
There were 2,147 calls for service in March—down 151 calls over the same period as last year—with 38 per cent of calls leading to proactive work.
“It’s notable that month over month our proactive work is starting to increase because we have more staffing,” said Van Dyke. “Last year we were down as low as or below 20 per cent. But with new recruits coming on board, we’re doing much better in that category.”
For the first three months of 2022, there were just under 6,000 calls for service with a downward trend for the first three months this year compared to previous years, which were impacted more heavily by COVID.
“Most are on the downward trend, which is always good because we’re talking mostly criminal occurrences,” Van Dyke said. “A lot of them suffer from a COVID bump with stuff like landlord-tenant disputes—those go up with COVID because people are cash strapped. Our by-law calls for service went through the roof as well because we’re working with the town by-law departments on a lot of COVID calls. We’re currently on a downward trend year-to-year.”
Month-to-month, PONs (provincial offence notices) are up with officers writing more tickets as the pandemic plays less of a role in police to civilian interactions.
“We’re seeing an upward trend in theft from vehicles,” said Van Dyke. “We’re slightly up in domestic frauds but in other categories, we’re going down like residential break and enters. We didn’t have any school break and enters, no robberies for the month of March or February—that’s a good news story because we got hit pretty hard in January.”
There were 106 motor vehicle collisions in March, and none were fatal—there was one over Easter weekend that will be reported in the crime update for April.
“As we hit the warmer weather, we start to see a downward trend in collisions,” said Van Dyke.
There have been 18 high-stress calls and 21 sexual assaults to date in the area since the beginning of 2022.
“That’s a significant number (of sexual assaults),” said Van Dyke. “If we continue at that level, we will be up quite a bit higher in that category.”
For COAST (Crisis Outreach and Support Team), the wait times for COAST teams at the hospital have increased in March at both hospitals.
“We had a meeting earlier this month where they said they’re trying to get their transfer of care back on track,” said Van Dyke. “They realize that a three and a half hour wait time is not acceptable for us. They get it and they’re working towards a solution but basically through the COVID period due to their staffing issues it just fell right off the rails.”
The total COAST incidents for the month of March were slightly lower than normal due to both COAST officers being off with COVID.
