The crime rate in Kelowna is up 24 percent – by far the highest rate of increase of any Canadian city.
The Kelowna Severity Index, which measures the frequency of particularly serious crimes, rose 20 percent – also the steepest increase in the country.
As a result, Kelowna’s overall crime rate of 10,747 crimes reported to police per 100,000 population is the second highest in Canada after Lethbridge.
Kelowna’s crime rate is almost twice the national average of 5,874 crimes per 100,000 population.
Kelowna also has the highest opioid-related drug offense rate in Canada, four times higher than Vancouver’s.
New figures, released Thursday by Statistics Canada, compare crime rates between 2018 and 2019. The national crime rate rose seven percent and the crime severity index rose five percent.
Rising crime rates in Kelowna are contrary to the trend in many other cities in the country, according to Statistics Canada figures.
More than half of the country’s largest cities reported a decline in their severity index between 2018 and 2019. However, Kelowna’s 20 percent increase in that index was the highest in Canada, followed by Victoria, Belleville, Ontario, and Vancouver.
While Kelowna’s overall crime rate rose 24 percent, the second highest rate of increase in Thunder Bay was 15 percent.
The gritty stats were released just three days after the Kelowna 2020 Citizen Survey was released, which found local residents far more pessimistic about the future than people in other Canadian communities.
35 percent of Kelowna residents believe the quality of life here is getting worse, compared with 22 percent who say it is improving. At a Monday meeting, the Council heard from a representative from Ipsos-Reid that it is normal for these two numbers to be balanced elsewhere.
Crime statistics are sure to bring renewed attention to issues such as policing, drug use and homelessness in Kelowna.
This year the city is hiring 11 more RCMP officers. During budget deliberations for 2020 last December, city officials recommended seven additional officials, but city councils said more were needed.
“All we hear from residents is ‘safety, security, safety,'” said Coun. Said Maxine DeHart at the time.
“I would like to send a message to our citizens that we are taking their concerns very seriously,” added Coun. Mohini Singh.
Last year, after reviewing the Kelowna RCMP case numbers, a consultant recommended that the local force, which then had 190 members, should be strengthened by 56 new members within five years.
A homeless census in the spring of 2020 found that 297 people slept poorly on the streets of Kelowna. That was 28 percent more than four years ago.
There were 38 illegal overdose deaths in Kelowna from January through September, according to the BC Coroners Service. The death toll in the valley due to such overdoses is already 84 this year, compared to 83 for all of 2019.
