Halton saw an increase in all types of crime except one between 2021 and 2022, but remains one of the safest large communities to live in Canada.
The Halton Regional Police Service (HRPS) released its 2022 Annual Report this week, which breaks down the number of crimes, and types of crimes committed.
“It’s a trend we’re seeing across all jurisdictions, and other services are reporting the same types of increases,” Halton Police Chief Stephen Tanner says. “It seems as if the pendulum has swung back now after COVID.”
Tanner added that rates of break-ins across Halton were down during the pandemic as people were home more often. In 2022, there were 818 break-ins across Halton, compared to 676 in 2021 – a difference of 21 per cent.
Halton Region had a 150 per cent increase in homicides, and the number of attempted murders doubled from 2021.The number of sexual assaults also rose by 24.4 per cent. However, the actual numbers remain relatively low for an area with a population of around 700,000, Tanner says.
There were five homicides, and eight attempted murders. The only crime that saw a drop from the previous year was impaired driving, which fell by 69 cases, or about 14 per cent.
The largest year-over-year increase of any type of crime listed in the report was arson, skyrocketing by 340 per cent. In 2021, there were only five instances of arson across Halton; that number soared to 22 last year.
“I had someone look over that to get a better understanding of this number, because I knew there were not that many cases of arson with a house or with a person being seriously injured,” Tanner says. “Most of these cases of arson are fires started in garbage dumpsters or signs, which still technically count as arson. Only about three of those 22 involved a home, and three others involved a car.”
Tanner is also aware of people burning stolen cars as a method of destroying evidence.
In the Greater Toronto Area last year, Tanner estimates there were between 27,000 and 35,000 car thefts, 1,302 of which were in Halton, or just less than five per cent on the higher end of the scale. He says many of the cars stolen in the GTA are transported to Montreal, and then shipped overseas.
“As much as crime has increased from 2021 to 2022, auto theft has further increased in the first few months of this year.” Tanner says. “We’ll keep working on it. We manage to recover about 56 per cent of the cars that are stolen, including 22 we recovered and returned from Morocco.”
Despite the increase in crimes across the board, Tanner is confident that Halton will remain the safest region to live in Ontario since all other regions in the GTA and across the province are experiencing the same types of crime increases.