Sometimes I think being a crime reporter must be a lot like being a cop. For the most part, it's a lot of chasing down leads that don't lead anywhere, responding to false alarms, sifting through reams of paperwork and dealing with a lot of people who simply don't want to talk to you.
In other words, most of the time, it's a lot less glamourous than it seems like it might be.
For example, Monday morning I sat through three hours of endless adjournments and traffic tickets only to come up with, well, pretty much nothing to report.
What had promised to be the main event, one Marcel Dion Keshane, who was in custody facing one count of assault with a weapon, two counts of assault, two counts of resisting arrest and a dozen charges of failing to comply with a condition or undertaking, was itself adjourned to the court in Kamsack, where he was due to face even more charges on Tuesday.
But that's the way it goes sometimes. When it does, I'm usually inclined to entertain myself by musing about things like statistics. Crime statistics are where I cut my teeth in the news business.
The first thing I noticed was that there seems to be a lot of violent crime. This week there were 104 Criminal Code of Canada (CCC) offences on the docket in Yorkton. Almost a third of those (33) were failure to comply charges. I tend to ignore those, not because they're not serious offences under the CCC, but they charges that are related to previous crimes. Also, Statistics Canada crime statistics are based on police-reported crimes, which do not include failure to comply.
Of the remaining 71 charges, 17 were for impaired driving offences, so we can take those out as well since StatsCan treats them separately. That leaves 54 charges, 16 of which were violent crimes (assault with a weapon, assault and sexual assault). That's 29.6 per cent, which is more than twice the national average.
Of course, maybe Monday was an unusual day. And, of course, the sample size would hardly qualify as meeting any kind of scientific standard. Besides, my analysis is anecdotal at best, the musings of a bored crime reporter.
Still, it's consistent with the latest stats that show Yorkton is among the more violent cities in Canada. Something to chew on.
