The City of Grande Prairie has again dropped in Macleans Magazine’s annual rankings of Canada’s Most Dangerous Places. However, it’s not because there was less crime in the city last year.
As previously reported, Grande Prairie had the 14th highest Crime Severity Index out of 237 communities in 2017 at 163 per 100,000 residents. The CSI was 156.03 in 2016, putting it in 12th place in Macleans’ rankings. The index is a Statistics Canada measure of all police-reported crime, which takes into consideration both the volume and seriousness of offences.
The Swan City cracks the 2019 top 10 list in drug trafficking other than cocaine and marijuana (5th with 84 incidents), firearms offences (5th with 27 incidents), fraud (8th with 512 incidents), and impaired driving (9th with 524 incidents). It’s ranked 20th for violent crime with a severity index of 143 per 100,000 residents and 23rd for assault with 563 incidents reported.
Outside of the rankings, numbers show homicide, firearms offences, fraud, and drug trafficking other than cocaine and cannabis rates got worse in Grande Prairie last year. The rates for assault, sexual assault, robbery, impaired driving, cocaine and cannabis trafficking, and youth crime got better.
Grande Prairie was considered the most dangerous city in Canada in 2015 and 2014. Over the past five years, the Crime Severity Index has gone up by 17.64 incidents per 100,000 residents.
For the second year in a row, North Battleford has been ranked Canada’s Most Dangerous City. Wetaskiwin has seen its crime rate climb the quickest over the past five years. Whitecourt is ranked 11th for overall crime, while Dawson Creek is 16th and Fort St. John is 33rd.