A couple of days ago hubby and I were having a yip - yap about something (that’s too far back to remember specifics) and he mentioned the “murder.”
Well being the ever morbid voyeur that I am and the fact that, lets face it, it can get pretty boring around Ye Old Saint John, I got all a flutter - “OOOO! What murder, where? Who got killed? What happened?” I gushed , waiting for the titillating details with glassy eyed wonder, a faint smile beginning to break across my face.
He said “you know... the murder.”
“WHAT MURDER??” I bleated and whined beginning to think I had been left out of some cool new and funky loop of whats “Hapnin”!
“The murder, the only murder we’ve ever had since we’ve moved here “ he retorted.
You see even though I have lived in Saint John for 2 years I still suffer from what Billy Joel so aptly wrote and sung about a New York State of Mind or in my case, an Edmonton state of mind. Assuming that a new murder or vicious crime had just happened last night or last week. Truth be known Saint John is one heck of a quiet town and things like that just don't happen here, or do they?......
For the first week or so after we moved here, neither one of us could sleep well. It seems that it was too quiet. You see back home (Edmonton) you can sometimes tell the time during the night just by the frequency that the Police chopper Air-1 flies over the city. (this can be handy if you don't want to roll over to check out the clock). Whereas even on a rowdy Friday or Saturday night in mid-summer you could shoot an arrow down King Street in Uptown Saint John and not hit a soul.
Violent crime, once mainly the purview of big urban centers, is now growing in many small and mid-size cities. Even as aggressive policing in places like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver helped dramatically lower the nation's overall crime rate in the 1990s, smaller cities like Halifax, Moncton and yes Saint John; are now seeing a rise in murder, assaults, and other violent incidents.
Some analysts, in fact, attribute the increase to criminal elements being shooed out of the larger cities. Others say it's simply the lack of good jobs, and a culture of violence that has seeped into small-town Canada.
In a rough ranking, that's what you would expect because it's all based on police data, We've had a spike in drug related violence. In a severity index, if you have a spike in things rated more severely, then it would rise.
A new crime severity index assigns each type of offence a different weight based on how many people charged with a given crime are sentenced to prison time and the average length of the sentence. For example, marijuana possession is worth seven points and murder is accorded 7,042.
This new reporting method comes as the Conservative government continues to push its getting tough on crime campaign, including new anti-gang legislation and ending what is known as two-for-one in sentencing, where criminals are given double the credit for time served in jail as they await trial. (was that a great deal or what?)
We've been hearing across the country that crime rates are going down, but it just feels in talking to ordinary Canadians that they don't feel as safe as they felt 20 years ago, so that would seem to contradict some of the statistical information that we in fact are privy to.
Statistics Canada also looked specifically at crimes against the person, such as homicide, robberies and sexual assault, to obtain an index of violence crime. In contrast to the declining overall crime severity index, the violent crime index held steady over the last decade, the report says, dropping only about two per cent between 1998 and 2007.
Some of the rates are going down, and some of the more violent rates seem to be going up, the severity of those crimes seem to be going up. Atlantic cities like Saint John, N.B., Halifax and St. John's, Nfld. had index values above the national average, despite being located in provinces with below-average crime severity.
A couple of days ago a Telegraph-Journal article went though a list of shots fired, listing them by location and date ending with the latest incident of the bartender who was shot after hours in an uptown club. However the police chief commented that;
Well being the ever morbid voyeur that I am and the fact that, lets face it, it can get pretty boring around Ye Old Saint John, I got all a flutter - “OOOO! What murder, where? Who got killed? What happened?” I gushed , waiting for the titillating details with glassy eyed wonder, a faint smile beginning to break across my face.
He said “you know... the murder.”
“WHAT MURDER??” I bleated and whined beginning to think I had been left out of some cool new and funky loop of whats “Hapnin”!
“The murder, the only murder we’ve ever had since we’ve moved here “ he retorted.
You see even though I have lived in Saint John for 2 years I still suffer from what Billy Joel so aptly wrote and sung about a New York State of Mind or in my case, an Edmonton state of mind. Assuming that a new murder or vicious crime had just happened last night or last week. Truth be known Saint John is one heck of a quiet town and things like that just don't happen here, or do they?......
For the first week or so after we moved here, neither one of us could sleep well. It seems that it was too quiet. You see back home (Edmonton) you can sometimes tell the time during the night just by the frequency that the Police chopper Air-1 flies over the city. (this can be handy if you don't want to roll over to check out the clock). Whereas even on a rowdy Friday or Saturday night in mid-summer you could shoot an arrow down King Street in Uptown Saint John and not hit a soul.
Violent crime, once mainly the purview of big urban centers, is now growing in many small and mid-size cities. Even as aggressive policing in places like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver helped dramatically lower the nation's overall crime rate in the 1990s, smaller cities like Halifax, Moncton and yes Saint John; are now seeing a rise in murder, assaults, and other violent incidents.
Some analysts, in fact, attribute the increase to criminal elements being shooed out of the larger cities. Others say it's simply the lack of good jobs, and a culture of violence that has seeped into small-town Canada.
In a rough ranking, that's what you would expect because it's all based on police data, We've had a spike in drug related violence. In a severity index, if you have a spike in things rated more severely, then it would rise.
A new crime severity index assigns each type of offence a different weight based on how many people charged with a given crime are sentenced to prison time and the average length of the sentence. For example, marijuana possession is worth seven points and murder is accorded 7,042.
This new reporting method comes as the Conservative government continues to push its getting tough on crime campaign, including new anti-gang legislation and ending what is known as two-for-one in sentencing, where criminals are given double the credit for time served in jail as they await trial. (was that a great deal or what?)
We've been hearing across the country that crime rates are going down, but it just feels in talking to ordinary Canadians that they don't feel as safe as they felt 20 years ago, so that would seem to contradict some of the statistical information that we in fact are privy to.
Statistics Canada also looked specifically at crimes against the person, such as homicide, robberies and sexual assault, to obtain an index of violence crime. In contrast to the declining overall crime severity index, the violent crime index held steady over the last decade, the report says, dropping only about two per cent between 1998 and 2007.
Some of the rates are going down, and some of the more violent rates seem to be going up, the severity of those crimes seem to be going up. Atlantic cities like Saint John, N.B., Halifax and St. John's, Nfld. had index values above the national average, despite being located in provinces with below-average crime severity.
A couple of days ago a Telegraph-Journal article went though a list of shots fired, listing them by location and date ending with the latest incident of the bartender who was shot after hours in an uptown club. However the police chief commented that;
"It seems that most of the gun related crimes are being perpetrated by drug dealers basically "flexing their muscle" and not directed at the public in general, so Saint John residents really don't have to worry."
Well now.....that is good to know.
Till later
Well now.....that is good to know.
Till later
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