One button click will now show you how much crime is in your N.L. community
CBC
Newfoundland and Labrador has unveiled a new online crime dashboard allowing users, with a click of a button, to see how their own communities rate against one another when it comes to violence.
"This is yet another step towards enhancing policing services in Newfoundland and Labrador," said Justice Minister John Haggie in a statement sent Thursday.
He said the information will help municipalities, community organizers and other groups make decisions when they're allocating resources.
"Access to accurate statistical information that is reliable and understandable helps to build transparency and trust with citizens and helps to demonstrate accountability from our police services," he said.
The dashboard launch comes on the heels of a Justice Department poll that found people are feeling less safe than five years ago. Respondents from 240 towns across the province were split on whether they felt a complaint lodged against a police officer would be treated fairly.
The crime dashboard consists of data from 45 police detachments in the province and includes the number of actual incidents, the crime rate, a crime severity index, crimes against persons, crimes against property, and Criminal Code violations.
The crime dashboard, which is now accessible on the Department of Justice and Public Safety website, allows people to select a particular community and see different rates of reported crimes.
For example, it says in 2023 — the most recent year it tracks — in St. John's there were 224 property crimes, 104 violent Criminal Code violations and 61 other Criminal Code violations.
St. John's, which is the most populous city in the province, also has by far the highest number of reported crimes against property and violent crime across the province. That number includes assaults, criminal harassment, sexual assaults and uttering threats. In 2023, St. John's police responded to 1,418 incidents of assault.
The department's statement says the dashboard was developed by the Policing Transformation Working Group in collaboration with the Office of the Chief Information Officer, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Through engagement work and a public survey, the statement says, there was a lot of interest in publicly available information about public safety and crime data.
The crime dashboard will be regularly updated from annual Statistics Canada's police-reported crime statistics.
"This is an important new tool that provides more transparency and valuable information about policing to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians," said the RCMP in a statement.
It said officers across the province will be able to use this information to "visualize" their work to the public.
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