Crime in Bonnyville Down

Stats presented to Town Council show a downward trend in crime

Bonnyville RCMP Detachment S/Sgt Luis Gandolfi presented crime stats for June-August 2016 to Bonnyville Town Council on Tuesday evening. 2016 stats were compared to the same time period for the years 2013-2015 and appear to be trending downwards in all areas; including the criminal code offenses which was down from 422 files from June to August in 2015 to 368 files in the same time period in 2016.

“Persons crimes were consistent with last year’s (files),” S/Sgt Gandolfi explained there were 51 files in both 2015 and 2016; which were lower than previous years numbers of 71 and 66. Persons crimes includes robbery, offenses related to death, sexual assaults, other sexual offenses, assault, kidnapping/hostage/abduction, extortion, criminal harassment, and uttering threats. Only two areas of persons crime were noticeably up from 2015, those were sexual assaults from zero to three files and uttering threats from four to twelve files.

Property crime peaked in 2015 with 249 files and is down for 2016 with 222 files. Property crime includes break & enters, theft of motor vehicle, theft over $5,000, theft under $5,000, possession of stolen goods, fraud, arson, and mischief to property. Of these only one was up from 2015 and that was fraud; which went from 21 files to 35.

Drug cases were down from 22 files to 15.  Weapons offenses was down quite a bit for 2016 from 122 files in 2015 to 95 files in 2016. These offenses include offensive weapons and disturbing the peace.

Overall, criminal code files in the Town of Bonnyville are lower for the months of June – August in 2016 when compared to statistics from 2015.