Rain driving criminals to the indoors
Posted November 15, 2018 11:22 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
DELTA (NEWS 1130) – If you’re leaving your car in an underground parkade, make sure there’s nothing valuable inside. Rain — like we’ve had this week — can change where exactly crime happens in your neighbourhood.
“When it is rainy outside or when it’s cold outside — say when I was working in Edmonton and it was minus 20 or 30 — people do move inside and the crime patterns change,” Delta Police Chief Neil Dubord tells NEWS 1130.
“Obviously we lose all sort of that street crime so the theft from autos, things that happen sorta out on the roadway, assaults or any kind of sort of personal robberies, those all seem to move but they all move inside.”
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With the crime pattern change in the wetter, darker months, Dubord says his officers patrol different areas.
“We do tell them to go into sheltered places, you know, public libraries are always sort of a place where we can do a quick walk through or malls are certainly all good as well.”
Dubord says most crime is fueled by addiction, so while the rain won’t stop it from happening, it does seem to reduce how much it happens overnight.
“You’ll see that call volume typically drop down and people will wanna stay inside and there’s not many public spaces open for people to go as well so they’ll stay inside personal residences.”
In addition to a spike in crime indoors during this time of year, Dubord says cops are kept busy with a spike in crashes.
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“You see the rain coming down, the visibility gets worse, as a result we do see an increase in crashes,” said Dubord. “For instance, in Delta, over the course of the last several weeks, we’ve had two pedestrian fatalities, which is just tragic.”
Dubord encourages people to wear reflective clothing and cross in crosswalks when walking outside, especially when it’s dark.
He adds officers are proactive with identifying intersections and areas that could use more lighting and there have been many areas that have seen a switch to LED lights, which Dubord said has been making things brighter.
