Update: Mayor Refutes Vernon’s Top 10 Dangerous Ranking

UPDATE

Vernon’s mayor takes exception to an article that suggests its one of the top ten most dangerous cities in Canada.

Macleans magazine makes assertion in it’s annual crime issue which uses police-reported crime stats, along with the volume and seriousness of offences.

Vernon came in 9th in the rankings led by North Battleford Sask.

Akbal Mund says he doesn’t hear many people saying Vernon is dangerous.

“I would put no stock into it (the article) because if I’m looking at communities in BC that I hear about that there’s lots of crime, I mean Surrey, Abbotsford, Prince George, these come to my mind. And I’m going, if Vernon is ahead of them, we have an issue on how this is done. Big issue.”

Mund says other larger cities are more dangerous than Vernon.

“When you see there’s a shooting in Surrey once a week, and they rank (34th) and we rank number 9, I have a little bit of a problem with that. I see a big problem with that. I don’t know if you can actually rank them,” adds Mund.

The mayor says another way to look at the stats is that the police are arresting more criminals, making the city safer.

“So the stats on crime actually don’t work because if you’re (police) doing your job and doing it great, you’re actually arresting everybody, but the stats will show there’s a large amount of crime because you are actually doing your job.”

Williams Lake (4th) and Langley (6th) were ahead of Vernon as far as BC’s most dangerous cities.

Earlier story by Tom Mark

The city of Vernon comes up 9th in a Maclean’s Magazine list of the 229 most dangerous city’s in which to live in the country.

It says we have a Crime Severity Index of 157.

When it comes to violent crime, Vernon is ranked 29th with an index of 113.

That Index is a Statistics Canada measure of all police-reported crime, which takes into consideration both the volume and seriousness of offences.

It’s based on figures available from 2016 RCMP reports.

The Canada average is 70.96.

The report shows rising assault and robbery rates along with huge spike in B & E’s.

It also shows an increase in trafficking of cocaine and other controlled drugs, but a decrease in trafficking or production of cannabis.

Kamloops comes 23rd on the list while Kelowna is 34th.