Thunder Bay needs to work on the problems behind violent crime: police
A spokesperson for the Thunder Bay Police Service says the community still has a long way to go in dealing with violent crime.
Chris Adams was commenting on the 2014 Crime Severity Index figures released Wednesday by Statistics Canada.
Compared to 32 other census metropolitan areas in the country, Thunder Bay ranked first in both violent crime and homicides, and took fourth spot for overall crime severity.
Although the city's police department has a higher-than-average rate of solving and clearing these crimes, there also needs to be a co-ordinated effort toward preventing them.
"We have to recognize that violence is a recurring issue," Adams said.
"Substance abuse continues to be a big problem. Addiction's a big problem. We need to keep investing in solutions to those. We can't just arrest our way out of these situations. We need to, as a community, deal with the problems themselves."
Thunder Bay logged 11 homicides last year — the highest number the city has ever recorded. There has been only one homicide in 2015 so far.
"Homicides — the bulk of which occur between people who are known to each other — are very hard to predict," he said.
"They result from an escalation of violence, situations that get out of hand very quickly. But what that says is, really, as a community we still have a long way to go in dealing with these types of crimes," said Adams.