The 2019 Brockton police statistics are now out and 2019 saw a decrease in violent, property and drug crime in Brockton over the previous year.
Violent crime dropped by 12 % (109 incidents to 96), property crime decreased by 16% (300 down to 251) and drug crime fell 25 % (12 incidents to 9)
Councilor and OPP Police Service Board Director James Lang is encouraged to see these stats on the decline.
He says the South Bruce OPP work very hard protecting and serving the residents, adding Brockton is quite fortunate to have the additional resources of the OPP to lean on when necessary.
While overall violent crime decreased by 12%, in the area of sexual assault there was a 54% percent increase in 2019 rising from 13 to 20.
South Bruce OPP Inspector Krista Miller notes that it is not just Brockton which has experienced an increase in sexual assault reports, she says this is a trend across the board.
She questions if this increase may be attributed to the continuation of the Me Too Movement with victims being more comfortable in coming forward.
Miller says it is quite possible that sexual assaults are in actuality not on the rise, but instead being better reported.
Also of note under violent crime was that there was 1 murder in 2019 with zero in the previous year.
Under property crime which experienced an overall 16% decrease, thefts, fraud and mischief stats were all on the decline, the only increase was under arson. (from 1 case in 2018 to 3 in 2019.)
Under Drug Crime possession and trafficking stats were all down with an overall 25 percent decrease.
Also of note, while violent, property and drug crime stats were all on the decline in 2019, the clearance rates for violent and property crimes was slightly down and the clearance rate for drug crime was up.
Violent crime had a 75% clearance rate (down 13%), property crime a 17% clearance rate (down 6%) and drug crime a 89% clearance rate (up 14%).
This works out to be an overall 36% clearance rate for violent, property and drug crime which represents a 7.5% decrease from 2018.