We were featured in a story on the CTV 6:00pm news Monday night about the recently released VPD Annual Report which highlights the decrease in property crime numbers and an increase in violent crime in Vancouver. The focus of the CTV story was to show that although the Police are doing a great job, there are many private organizations whose spending on security has increased significantly in the past few years. For example, the Downtown Business Improvement Association (DVBIA) spends nearly a million dollars a year on security, while other Associations like Kerrisdale, South Granville and West 4th Avenue also spend a significant portion of their annual budgets on security services.
This, coupled with the fact that many homeowners are learning what they need to do to help prevent being the victim of property crime have all contributed to the overall reduced numbers.
The VPD report said that statistics show a 10.5% reduction in property crime in 2005 compared to 2004. In terms of burglaries, in 2004 their were 9,974 burglaries compared to 8,372 in 2005, a reduction of 16.2% city-wide.
I compiled the neighbourhood specific statistics and created the graph below to show how we are doing so far in 2006 compared to the same periods (January – July) in 2004 and 2005. As you can see, we are still trending down in most neighbourhoods with the exception of Kitsilano, Dunbar and Kerrisdale which are all showing an increase in burglaries so far this year compared to the same period last year.
Overall, the total number of reported burglaries citywide so far this year is 1,215 compared to 1,360 in 2005 and 1,463 in 2004. That corresponds to a 7% drop between 2004 and 2005 and an 11% drop between this year and 2005.