Contrary to published reports by a group claiming affiliation with Anonymous hackers, sexual assaults are not on the rise in Thunder Bay, says the city's police chief.
And, J.P. Levesque said on Thursday, only 14 of 139 cases from 2012 remain unresolved.
Levesque took issue with a recently established crowd-source crime map the group established, using data imported from the police crime reporting online tool, stating crimes reported on the police map are not updated when they’re solved or taken off the books.
“If you look at the numbers for the last four years, it’s remained relatively flat as far as changes to the numbers. We saw a slight increase back four years ago, from 2009 to 2010. We went from 118 reported incidents of sexual assault to about 130,” Levesque said.
“And we’ve seen that number, the 130, for the last few years or so.”
It’s a far cry from the 69 per cent increase being claimed by the suporters of Operation Thunderbird, known on Twitter as #opthunderbird.
There’s a danger in reporting numbers that aren’t correct, the chief added.
“Misinformation is creating all kinds of problems with fear and mistrust to some degree. I don’t know why. I don’t know where they got the number from. It’s clearly not correct and I wish they’d stop putting it out there.”
Operation Thunderbird, however, stands by its numbers and its map, which will allow the public and victims to publish the location and details about future assaults.
"All TB Newswatch had to do to see if police were lying or not about the numbers is to look at the numbers Thunder Bay Police have published on their own. Page 45 clearly states that their were 89 reported sexual assaults in 2011, a substantial decrease from the 120 reported in 2007," the group wrote in response when asked where their numbers came from.
Asked to clarify and police said the actual number is 143 and the Operation Thunderbird members are looking at the wrong figure. The 89 assaults is actually a filtered number that has taken any unfounded claims out of the equation.
The group also questioned how many complaints led to charges being laid.
There’s no question the number of sexual assaults – and violent crime in general – is too high in Thunder Bay, Levesque said.
Thunder Bay’s is routinely among the top cities in Canada when violent crime index is released each year, and with seven homicides in 2012, the municipality is likely looking at retaking the title as Canada’s murder capital.
But police certainly aren’t ignoring the cases that come across their desk, including a violent Dec. 27 sexual assault the First Nations victim claimed was racist in nature, Levesque said.
“We see a large number of them solved. We also see a fairly large number where they’re unfounded. And again we also see one is reported, the victim initially comes forward and then at some point in the process they say, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ and they actually sign off on it,” Levesque said.
Reported crimes are automatically posted to the crime reporting website, regardless of the outcome.
Most of the attacks aren’t random, Levesque added.
“Just like a lot of violent crime we see in this city and domestic violence and homicides, the trend here tends to be they’re known to each other, so the victim and the accused are known to each other.”
The police chief said they don’t track assaults of any kind by race, though in the heat of an investigation they will use it to provide a suspect’s description to the public.
Police say they encourage anyone with information on any crime to contact them directly or anonymously through Crime Stoppers.
