The area around Trunk Road and the Trans-Canada Highway in Duncan has seen a rise in the number crimes against people during the spring months this year, according to Staff Sergent Ken Beard, the head of the North Cowichan/Duncan RCMP detachment.
Beard told Duncan’s city council at its meeting on Aug. 19 during his quarterly report to council that there were 53 calls for service regarding assaults in the three-month period from April to June of this year in the Trunk Road/TCH area, compared to 45 in the same time period in 2023.
He also said there were 19 calls regarding people uttering threats in the area during the same time period, compared to 13 during the same three months last year.
“We’ve also had some calls for service regarding broken windows in vehicles in that area this spring,” Beard said. “From the point of view of anything significant in these numbers, most calls for service were for relatively minor and more ‘mischiefy’ types of behaviour.”
Beard said police also received four calls for arson in that area this spring.
“They are classified as arson, but most of these are warming fires with people using coffee cans, for example, to warm something up or to warm themselves, and not people starting dumpster fires or anything that’s really arson related,” he said.
Statistics from across the entire area in Beard’s quarterly report show that there were a total of 393 calls for service regarding crimes against people this spring, including 30 calls about harassment, a big jump from the 14 in the same time period last year.
There were also 235 calls regarding assaults across the whole jurisdiction, down from 246 last year and 35 calls regarding sex offences, a small drop from 32 last year.
In property crimes, Beard’s report indicates that there were 390 calls regarding mischief to property this spring in the detachment’s jurisdiction, 110 calls for shoplifting, 30 calls for theft from vehicles, and 58 calls for fraud.
The report also said there were 74 reports of people failing to appear at their court dates at the Duncan courthouse.
Beard explained that sometimes in these cases, the Crown will lay a charge, but not very often.
“What they do is create a file on the failure to appear and we keep track of those to see if the person is establishing a pattern that could be spoken to at this person’s next bail hearing when that person is apprehended again,” he said. “Not all these people are from Duncan. They just happen to be arrested in Duncan or North Cowichan or some other part of the Cowichan Valley and then have to appear at the Duncan courthouse.”
Coun. Garry Bruce said that the Nanaimo RCMP detachment’s crime statistics show that the city is having a big problem with people trading prescription drugs for illegal drugs.
“People are coming out of drug stores and trading their drugs from the store for illicit drugs,” he said. “Is that a problem here?”
Beard said he has heard that this is happening in other parts of the province, but he’d have to do some investigating to determine if it’s a serious issue in this region.
“I would have to see what kind of exhibits that we’ve pulled from the last series of drug seizures to determine if it’s a safe-supply issue or were they manufactured in someone’s workshop,” he said.
