Discussions

Is Brandon in some sort of competition to become Canada's Crime Capital. Attempt to murders with sawed off shotguns, hit & runs with stolen vehicles, break & enters, sexual assaults, child pornography, etc...  
 
Why and where is this all coming from??

It's shocking but we hear more about "petty" crimes because social media is great for reaching out. If you think brandon is bad check out dauphin talk on Facebook. For a very small city it has just as much crime

There could be many various reasons for criminal activity...  
Biological theory.  
Socialization theory.  
Control theory.  
There are more theories than I have listed above. If you have an interest in reading psychological content there are many textbooks and educational references regarding forensic criminal psychology. To sum it up: it is relative to unresolved childhood psychological issues.

with too much time on their hands. Idle hands are the devil's workshop. Time to make people earn their cheques that are dished out every two weeks.  
 
Just my opinion.

it's just one of the bad side effects of a growing city.

The increase in violent crime is a direct correlation to the meth use in the city. Brandon is flooded with it, and it is crossing all socioeconomic boundaries. It is why they are a few folks trying to create awareness, and expanded services to our Westman area.  
Yesterday the Brandon Sun ran an article on the upcoming town hall forum to discuss this very devastating issue.  
Many addicts are desperate for services, but with little resources to deal with all aspects of addiction the problem is going to get worse.  
Can you imagine what the city will look like should any layoffs threaten workers here; particularly with some of our larger enterprises?

puddles said "The increase in violent crime is a direct correlation to the meth use in the city. Brandon is flooded with it, and it is crossing all socioeconomic boundaries. It is why they are a few folks trying to create awareness, and expanded services to our Westman area.   Yesterday the Brandon Sun ran an article on the upcoming town hall forum to discuss this very devastating issue.   Many addicts are desperate for services, but with little resources to deal with all aspects of addiction the problem is going to get worse.   Can you imagine what the city will look like should any layoffs threaten workers here; particularly with some of our larger enterprises? "

meth is just another drug that is being abused in the city.  
 
People need to have the will to stop abusing drugs, if you don't have the will to stop any destructive behaviour what can be done?  
 
The focus needs to be on mental health services. I know of too many people who have sought help for their disease but have been sent home just to end up committing suicide.

Is there any wider data to point to any kind of significant increase?  
I'm not saying its not the case and I'm not saying there hasn't been serious crime that Police have had to respond to, but in 12+ years of doing this site I've seen a lot of declarations of huge increase in crime that have come down to more perception than reality which leads me to look for data first.  
 
BPS data used to be on Crimereports.com which was quite handy to get the most current info... but just checking it out and it doesnt look like thats the case any more. One starting point might be the BPS monthly stats. Their July report is at the link below where they indicate that year-on-year total criminal code violations for the month were up 10%. When you dig deeper, the difference is almost all in crime against property and traffic violations.... crime against person was down compared to July of last year:  
http://police.brandon.ca/images/pdf/monthlyStats/July_2017.pdf  
 
June shows a 31% increase in criminal code violations, again with the huge majority of that number coming from crimes against property.. mainly break and enter and theft:  
http://police.brandon.ca/images/pdf/monthlyStats/June_2017.pdf  
 
Another data point to work with might be comparing 2015 to 2016.. data that's avail in BPS annual reports:  
 
- For 2016 they are reporting that there were 5,311 criminal code violations on the year and 36,748 calls for service  
- For 2015 it was 5,333 violations and 34,029 calls  
 
Links for those annual reports:  
http://police.brandon.ca/images/pdf/annualReports/report_2016.pdf  
 
http://police.brandon.ca/images/pdf/annualReports/report_2015.pdf (warning: file is huge!)