A lot of folks are beginning to wonder if the nasty downside of our recent growth spurt is an above average uptick in criminal activity.
Larceny, robbery and burglary, the three amigos of lawlessness, appear to be getting the upper hand in the Shining Valley.
After reading about a recent heist, Haydn Russell, a concerned Squamish resident, dropped this zinger on The Chief’s Facebook page: “Welcome to Squrrey.”
And Andrea Foubert, another social media commentator, said “So many thefts here lately. I have seen this town give so much love and help to each other and it saddens me to see people feel the need to steal, and destroy property.”
Just before Christmas, in a brazen act of thievery, the steering mechanism was pilfered from a snowmobile on display at the Rope Runner Aerial Park.
In October, the Sea to Sky Hotel beer and wine store on Tantalus Road was robbed.
A month later an intruder with a knife held up the Mountain Retreat Hotel Liquor store.
At the beginning of December robbers helped themselves to the contents of the safe at the 99 North Medical Cannabis Dispensary. And during the third week in December there were three break and enter and two vehicles were broken into.
Prior to that sequence of criminal misadventure an Ottawa man hatched an elaborate fraud scheme that involved using fake credit cards to purchase high end cars from local dealers.
With a constabulary spread thin over a sprawling community located on both sides of a major north/south thoroughfare it appears Squamish is becoming a hotbed for crimes of opportunity.
But what do the year-over-year crime stats spanning the period between 2007 and 2016 reveal about the severity of the problem?
According to the B.C. Ministry of Public Safety, in 2007 there were 2,438 Criminal Code offences in the District of Squamish.
By 2016 that number dropped to 1518.
In 2007 there were 461 violent offences. Nine years later violent offences leveled off at 298. In 2007 there were 1,294 reported property crimes.
By 2016 that number had plummeted to 813. The highest number of motor vehicle thefts occurred in 2008. That year 75 vehicles were stolen in Squamish. Eight years later thieves made off with 38 vehicles.
In other words, car and truck thefts dropped by nearly half during that period.
We’ll have to wait and see what pattern emerges for 2017 because those figures have yet to be released.
But if we keep the stats for the previous decade in mind, the prevailing belief that crime is on a dramatic upswing may require revision.
Nevertheless, even if the numbers appear to be declining, many anxious residents consider the present level of crime unacceptable and are worried about where it will take us.
