Langley City’s crime rate was higher than the Township’s in 2018, but while crime levels in the City decline, they rose in the Township.
The City continued to have a higher crime rate than the Township, according to Statistics Canada’s breakdown of crimes and arrests from communities across the country.
There were 18,247.18 criminal incidents per 100,000 population. Because Langley City’s population is so small, the actual number of crimes committed is much lower – just 5,076.
That crime rate is down from 20,489.62 in 2017 and 20,312.38 in 2016. Those two years saw a recent peak in reported crimes, increasing from 16,316 in 2015 and 15,120 in 2014.
Overall, Langley City saw a 10.94 per cent drop in its crime rate in 2018 from 2017.
A total of 447 people were charged with crimes, a rate of 1,822.11 people per 100,000 residents. The number of people charged with crimes is lower than in 2017, when it was 1,840, but higher than in 2014 to 2016.
There were 11 youths charged with crimes, a rate of 736.77. This is one of the lowest numbers in the last five years, down from a high of 19 youths charged in 2014, when the rate was 1,301.37 per 100,000.
The crime rate in Langley Township rose 4.2 per cent in 2018 from 2017, although the actual rate remains lower than it was four years ago.
The number of criminal incidents in the Township in 2018, per 100,000 residents, was 7,595.67. That’s up from a rate of 7,289.39 in 2017, but lower than the rate in 2016, 2015, or 2014.
A total of 846 people were charged with crimes in 2018, up from 760 in 2017 but lower than the number charged in other recent years.
The Township has a charge rate of 788.43 people per 100,000 residents.
Just 44 youths were charged with crimes in the Township in 2018, a rate of 462.43 per 100,000 population aged 12 to 17.
In the Crime Severity Index, the Township and City were in the same boat – one rising, one falling.
The Township’s Crime Severity Index score was 85.84 per cent, up about two per cent from 2017. The Violent Crime Severity Index was 64.56, up 12.48 per cent from the previous year.
In the City, the Crime Severity Index was higher, at 154.19, but that was down almost 20 per cent from the year before.
The Violent Crime Severity Index stood at 105.10, down 26 per cent from 2017.
The statistics on both total numbers of crime and crime severity show that the City seems to have had a peak in crime between 2015 and 2017, but that the rates and levels of violence have declined over the last two years.
Langley City Mayor Val van den Broek credited the use of geographic profiling tools for the RCMP helping to resolve crime hot spots around the community. They could focus their issues on specific areas that needed help, van den Broek said.
Langley Township and City have shared a single RCMP detachment for decades. Higher crime rates in Langley City have sometimes come up in debates over shared funding between the two councils.