The total number of Criminal Code violations in Thompson in 2016 was higher than the previous years but in line with the number of crimes reported to police in 2012 and 2013.
Violent crimes, however, were up nearly 28 per cent from 2015, when there were more than the previous three years, a document provided by the Thompson RCMP detachment shows.
Altogether, there were 5,632 Criminal Code violations in Thompson in 2016, compared to 4,672 in 2015, 4,792 the year before that and 5,696 and 5,726 in 2013 and 2012, respectively.
Violent offences however, totalled 1,151, 251 more than in 2015 and higher than in any of the three years before that, when there were 735, 802 and 889 respectively. Just over 20 per cent of all Criminal Code violations in Thompson were violent offences in 2016, compared to 19 per cent in 2015, 15 per cent in 2014, about 14 per cent in 2013 and 15 per cent in 2012.
There were three homicides recorded in 2016 - one first-degree murder and two charges of second-degree murder, equalling the number from 2012 after only one in 2015 and zero in both 2013 and 2014.
Assaults with a weapon and assaults causing bodily harm rose to 133 in 2016 from 105 the previous year, their highest since there were 139 recorded in 2012. Simple assaults were up about 40 percent from 547 in 2015 to 766 in 2016. There were 500 or fewer in 2012, 2013 and 2014.
Mischief charges were up to 1,451 in 2016, about 38 per cent higher than the 1,054 offences in 2015 and the highest since there were 1,486 in 2012.
Disturbing the peace offences were up more than 10 per cent from 2015, for a total of 1,693, the most since 2013, when there were 2,257.
There were more Youth Criminal Justice Act offences in 2016 – 68 – than in any of the previous four years. The number of youth offences have risen each year in the past five years, from 51 in 2012 to 55 in 2013, 61 in 2014 and 62 in 2015.
