Summer crime statistics show a rise in calls about assaults in Lethbridge

In July it was 136 this year compared to 95 in June of 2017, and then in August, there was 118 compared to 76 last year.

Ashcroft says there’s quite a lot of information because it covers the entire summer.

“You’ll notice assaults are up, theft is up, and frauds are up. There’s no particular thing that’s driving the assaults, these numbers are from NICHE (LPS’ current records management system) so this is how it’s reported to us initially but that doesn’t mean that’s how it ends up,” Ashcroft said.

For example, he mentioned how there were 118 calls about assaults in August, but charges were laid in 43 of those instances and the rest of them were dealt with in other ways including the victim not wishing to prosecute or police got to a call and no one was there.

Complete selected crimes breakdown:

June: 122 assaults, 38 B&E residential, 38 B&E commercial, 57 frauds and 107 for drugs.

July: 136 for assaults, 50 B&E residential, 38 B&E commercial, 62 frauds and 130 for drugs.

August: 118 assaults, 54 B&E residential, 36 B&E commercial, 72 frauds and 116 for drugs.

“The B&E residential, I know from a meeting I had recently, that a lot of those are involving sheds where bottles were the target,” Ashcroft said. “The thefts, I think we’re all aware the drugs problem is driving a lot of that, as are the frauds.”

The frauds are double from last year, and Ashcroft says that includes several things including a CRA scam and a number of dine-and-dash incidents they’ve dealt with during this period.

“Another thing that does relate to problems we’re having community-wide is that a lot of the things that are being targeted in the thefts are debit and credit cards which in turn are then used for fraud. They’ll take a credit card and use it ten times before they finally stop.”

Pressed further, Ashcroft explained some greater details about the assaults in the city in particular.

“Of the 118 total, 43 were cleared by charge, 23 were unsolved and in 21 instances the complainant claimed to have laid charges, unfounded were 5, non-criminal were 3 and one went to a diversionary program. Across the spectrum here, including four assaults against police officers, the bulk of them were common assaults.

“I specifically asked are these domestics, are these at the bars, but there’s no real pattern they’re able to discern.”

Ashcroft says due to not seeing a specific pattern it’s tough to come with a plan to curb the high assault numbers but did add they’re targeting the domestic assaults and tracking offenders.

by Aaron Mahoney (@Mahones93 on Twitter) with files from Lara Fominoff (@LaraFominoff on Twitter)

Summer crime statistics show a rise in calls about assaults in Lethbridge

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