Many police officers, when finding their time to let their mind wander, or working at FIFA, begin to contemplate the trajectory of their lives and that eventual retirement. That blissful time where you picture a comfortable chair on a well worn and comfortable porch. And when that day comes and you will be facing the decision as to where to go to find that nirvana. Some will do the easiest thing and just remain in the same place you have lived for the last number of years, usually in one suburb or another, a house paid off, the children out of the nest. Some will follow the grand children, to be near and helpful. Many others will pursue a home in the country, out of the evil and dastardly city or suburb where crime runs rampant, to a place where your neighbour is some distance away, where you can hide in peace and solemnity, away from the clearly crumbling culture.

Retirees also follow trends, so in British Columbia you will hear place names like Salmon Arm, Courtney, Campbell River, and Gibsons. All places where my fellow geriatrics can often be found sitting around the local Tim Hortons, usually at some ungodly early hour, ball caps pushed back on their wisdom filled heads and dispensing early with the talk of the weather and Trump. They joke about the spouse, because the spouse is not there, however they get serious with discussion of the latest news and pictures coming out of the cities showing homeless encampments, drug destroyed humans, and the horrific traffic. How can anybody live there they ask, shaking their heads in disbelief at the possibility.

However, if you are thinking about life in the hinterland, away from the throngs, on that hobby farm or house in the middle of nowhere, you need to check out the latest crime figures coming out of Statistics Canada. The latest stats reach a central conclusion: crime rates are lower in the cities than in rural areas. To be clear, they define “rural” areas as towns and villages of less than a 1,000 person population, or living on agricultural lands and or un-developed lands. All those places where you have to “drive into town” to get the double-double coffee.

Some of the figures are startling. Keep in mind that only 14% of the population lives in defined “rural areas”. However those areas represent 22% of the violent crimes, 17% of the property crimes, 27% of the criminal code traffic offences, and 23% of “other” “Criminal Code offences. On the Crime Severity Index, rural areas are 50% higher than the cities and 45% higher in terms of “violent” crime. Impaired driving is 3 x higher in the rural areas. When you do down the various crimes list, robbery is the only statistic where the cities rank higher than the rural areas.

If you want to lessen the chance of being murdered, don’t move to a rural area, because the rate of homicide there is 70% higher–2.92 per 100,000 whereas it is 1.72 per 100,000 in the cities. Over a 10 year period from 2014 to 2024, women were more likely to be killed in rural areas where the homicide rate increased by 68% compared to 29% in the cities. This was equally true of those crimes defined as “intimate partner” violence.

As one checks the map of the areas most affected by crime, one fact also becomes clear, the more north one goes the higher the crime rate, the rate being 24% higher in northern rural areas. And, if you are thinking of moving to the Prairies; Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba have the highest rural crime rates. Saskatchewan was the highest followed by Manitoba, then Alberta. (Manitoba also had the highest urban crime rate). If you do want to live in a rural area, Prince Edward Island, Ontario and Quebec are the only Provinces where the rural crime rates are actually lower than the cities.

Why are the Prairies the least desirable and why do the statistics reverse in Ontario, Quebec and Prince Edward Island. Most police officers know the answer when asked, but it is impolite answer, an answer which by mere mention will result in your having to defend yourself from charges of racism. But stats don’t lie and Statistics Canada does measure and point to the difference. In short, it is the Indigenous effect. It states that in 95% of areas where police are servicing predominantly indigenous populations the Provincial crime rates are above the national average. In another statistic, in some Prairie Provinces, 85% of the inmates are Indigenous. In overall general police reporting, the total number of crimes are 6 times higher in the Indigenous communities.

For the police, it is well known that the most dangerous places to police are the rural areas, not in the cities where back up and extensive other police resources can be found. Of course that is often where the RCMP in particular run annual manpower shortages, where currently, Manitoba and Saskatchewan are operating with 17.5% vacancy rates, while in Nunavut and the North west Territories, the vacancy rate is about 20%. So not only are the rural areas less safe, there is also the fact that the police are in a worse position to often respond.

Of course I am being somewhat facetious here. Do I think the downtown east side of Vancouver is safer than rural Manitoba? Not really. Statistics don’t lie, but they can be distorted. When it comes to crime stats, the reason is simple and criminologists refer to it as the “dark figure of crime”. It is the un-reporting of crime. This is true of both cities and rural areas, but I do suspect things such as “property” crime in particular go vastly unreported in the cities. (This despite the growth and flavour of the day of on-line reporting.) In a variety of studies, property crimes were estimated to only be reported 40% of the time, violent crimes 48% of the time, and in some of those studies, sexual assaults were only reported as little as 10% of the time.

Of course there is plethora of reasons for this, such as the lack of faith in the police being able to do something, stigma and shame of reporting, minimization of the crime, or fear of retaliation. That all being said, in an FBI study, there was a general consensus that in 50 states, “fewer than half of crimes in the U.S. are reported and only half of those are solved.” This is also true in Canada, where Statistics Canada has developed the General Social Survey on Victimization, which also concludes that the “vast majority of offences never come to the attention of law enforcement. “

So if one takes into consideration that crime statistics are by their very nature, distorted and not presenting the whole picture, then there is a serious and difficult problem in policy making in the policing realm. It is a lot easier to try and figure out where to retire, than whether crime fighting efforts are working for instance. How do you estimate resourcing needs when you cannot measure the true amount of crime?

So to sum up, you should probably disregard my retirement advice in this blog. In the meantime, I will continue to live in the heart of downtown Vancouver. Safe within my world of the drug addicted and mentally distraught patrons of the streets, believing that it is not that bad, just think of those poor souls in the country. Plus, I did not want to have to buy a gun, I am much more peace loving in my retirement years and the thought of getting into a gun fight at my age seems a little preposterous, especially with my eyesight failing and a shaky trigger pull.