Crime is nosediving in Surrey – according to statistics just released by the RCMP.
On Wednesday morning, Surrey RCMP made its first-quarter statistics public, and they show crimes dropping in almost every category for the first three months of this year when compared to the same time last year.
Violent crime is down two per cent and property crime is down 11 per cent.
Murders have decreased33 per cent (two, as opposed to the three in the first quarter last year); attempted murder is down to 10 from 13 last year; and robbery dropped 29 per cent.
Business break-and-enters were cut by 19 per cent, while residential break-ins decreased five per cent.
Motor vehicle theft was down by 14 per cent.
Surrey RCMP said the latest report is a positive one, but as with all quarterly statistics, they noted they are just a snapshot of a relatively small period of time.
The statistics come out as the police deal with 34 incidents of shots fired in the city so far this year, eclipsing the rate of gun violence last year.
Those incidents are reported in different areas of the statistics, depending on how the crime unfolded.
Eight people who were shot may have been logged as attempted murder or assault with a weapon, depending on the circumstances.
The one person who was killed as a result of a shooting was logged as a murder.
Some cautionary areas of the statistics include sexual assaults, which were up 67 per cent.
Surrey RCMP Cpl. Scotty Schumann said those numbers are something that caught police attention.
He said it’s important to note that sex assault covers a wide spectrum of offences that are sexual in nature, from rape to the downloading of pornography.
Abduction and kidnapping were also up 23 per cent during the first part of 2016, fraud rose 17 per cent and shoplifting increased eight per cent.
