Police chief says crime rate going down
By Dale Woodard on June 4, 2021.
Crime rates in Lethbridge are headed in a favourable downward trajectory, said Lethbridge Police Service police chief Shahin Mehdizadeh.Speaking at the Lethbridge Chamber of Commerce Virtual Town Hall session Tuesday morning, Mehdizadeh spoke of the crime trends of the past three years.
Though the police chief noted no city or town will ever be crime-free, Mehdizadeh pointed to some numbers nonetheless going in the right direction.
“The crime trend in 2020 versus 2019 were on a downward trend, which is great,” said Mehdizadeh. “But in 2021 we are seeing a significant downward trend again. This is a result of a lot of good work our employees are doing and citizen participation. We are looking at things in a different way. It’s a combination of the effort (and that) our employees have bought into the new processes and initiatives we’ve put in place to make sure we have a more realistic and productive way of looking at crime through intelligence-led policing, through analytical work, through gathering information and seeing what we can do with it with the right approach and all of our units working on a common front to deal with the issues in this city.”
Mehdizadeh offered citizens the chance to log on to the Community Town Hall meeting to view the stats.
“I can show the stats and trends,” he said. “They’re significant and I’m really happy we’ve seen that trend. Nothing makes me happier than to share that with our community. That has a certain impact on how safe people think they are in the community,” he said. “A lot of times the media target it from a crime perspective, we’re going to show that’s not the case.
However, Mehdizadeh said while crime is trending down overall in the city, that’s not the case in every block and region.
“There are some places crime is trending up,” he said. “When you look at our crime reduction methodology, it’s exactly that. Where the crime is trending up is where we need to actually put our sources to make sure those citizens are also enjoying a neighbourhood where the crime is trending down and they feel safer. I need to acknowledge crime is going down, but in some areas crime is going up. But overall it’s been in a downward trend.” Follow @dwoodardherald on Twitter 3
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