What CrimeStat won’t tell you
City’s new crime website can tell you about car thefts, not domestic disturbances
Marlo Campbell

I was horrified when I heard that a stolen car was used to deliberately run down a pedestrian.

Since then, I’ve heard that another similar crime was committed.

If two events can be considered a trend, then this one is disturbing, and I can empathize with the outrage Winnipeggers are feeling. I can even sympathize with those who want vengeance. Knee-jerk reactions are certainly understandable.

Still, I wonder if the current frenzy surrounding car theft is more a case of us not seeing the forest for the trees.

With the introduction of Winnipeg’s new CrimeStat website, a small assortment of statistics are now at our fingertips. However, without any context or explanation, these numbers only contribute to our feelings of helplessness and panic.

They also paint an incomplete picture of crime. True, 172 cars were stolen between March 7 and March 13, but to put things in perspective I’d like to share a few statistics you won’t find on CrimeStat.

On March 13 I attended a lunchtime seminar hosted by the Manitoba Women’s Advisory Council.

The topic was the province’s Domestic Violence Intervention Unit. Run through Manitoba Justice, it’s a program that connects people dealing with domestic violence or its aftermath with local counselling or advocacy services. The unit has four staff members who actively seek out those in need of their help through an information-sharing arrangement with the Winnipeg Police Service. Specifically, they review all incident reports to find domestic-dispute situations where charges were not laid.

This past January, they reached out to 613 families.

That’s over 150 incidents per week: situations in which people — most likely women and children — were yelled at, threatened, humiliated, hit, kicked, sexually assaulted or beaten.

And those are the just the reported situations. Countless other people living with domestic violence suffer in silence.

Statistics in the city’s preliminary operating budget seem to confirm the scope of the problem.

Within a summary of police activity, the budget lists the Top 5 service events for 2006. Domestic disturbances led the pack. Winnipeg police responded to 16,639 of them last year, equivalent to 1,387 each month.

So, yes, car theft is a real problem in Winnipeg — but so are many other things.

Maybe our outrage should be focused less on the theft of objects and more on the abusive people who make thousands of Winnipeggers feel unsafe in their own homes.

Where does a car thief grow up? What’s his or her home environment like? What would happen to car-theft rates if we invested more time, energy and money into housing, addictions, mental health, recreation and education?

I concede that these two recent incidents involving stolen cars are shocking, but crime simply doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and the big picture has to be acknowledged if we’re to have any chance of successfully responding to the issue.

The skyrocketing rate of car theft in Winnipeg is just the tip of the iceberg. To address it we need to look deeper.