Crime is down in British Columbia. In New Westminster, it’s way down. According to the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General of B.C., the provincial crime rate has dropped 19% over the past decade. In New Westminster, it’s down a striking 32%.

Last September I wrote that New Westminster’s SkyTrain safety statistics challenged our community’s assumptions about crime issues at our five SkyTrain stations. First of all, crime is generally down. Secondly, when measuring overall incidences of crime per 100,000 passengers, 22nd St. Station turned out to be worse than the much busier New Westminster station.

Crime statistics show that New Westminster is a safer city than in past years. So why don’t people feel safer? We all know someone who knows someone whose house has been broken into several times, or who has witnessed flagrant drug dealing, or seen a new ‘girl’ working 12th St. And then there’s the newspaper crime beat. A New Westminster man was recently arrested (and released on bail) for allegedly sexually assaulting a young woman near a Vancouver SkyTrain Station (and some people misheard it as a rape at 22nd St. Station). Cats were doused in paint thinner. Children were followed by a suspicious man in a truck near a school. People remember stories, not statistics.

I stumbled across New West city Councilor Jaimie McEvoy on Saturday conducting the 2009 wheelability assessment uptown with a group of volunteer citizens. On a perfect September day, the group was busy on 7th street creating an inventory of inaccessible curbs, dangerous sidewalk cracks and non-compliant porticos.

The latest crime statistics challenge popular belief of SkyTrain safety in New West. New Westminster SkyTrain, for example, was ranked as the second least secure in a 2008 survey of transit riders, but the actual rate of crime places it 13th on the list. I would have assumed that my home station, 22nd St. SkyTrain, would have ranked somewhere in the middle of the pack, but it’s actually the third-worst station on the line for crime after Surrey Central and Gateway.

Two of the three police officers who were alleged to have beaten, robbed and racially insulted a delivery man in Vancouver last week will be charged in the assault.
Charges of assault and possession of stolen property are recommended against an officer with the New Westminster police, while a charge of robbery is recommended against an officer with the West Vancouver force, Vancouver Police Chief Jim Chu told reporters Monday.
Chu said there was not enough evidence to recommend charges against a third officer from the Delta police department, who was initially …

A New West police officer was among three off-duty cops who were arrested for allegedly assaulting and robbing a man in Vancouver.
Three off-duty police officers from different suburban departments were arrested Wednesday on allegations they assaulted and robbed a man in Vancouver.
The Vancouver Police Department said the three officers were involved in an altercation with a 47-year-old newspaper delivery driver from Surrey, B.C.
Police declined to provide many details, citing the continuing investigation, but said they responded to a 911 call about a fight outside an upscale hotel in the city’s …

New Westminster police are putting their snazzy new retro-styled cruisers through their paces. It’s seems like it’s been an unusually busy – and hazardous – week for local law enforcement officers. 
Last Sunday, cops were pepper-sprayed by two youthful ne’er-do-wells near 5th Ave. and 7th St.  The attack happened while arresting the pair, following a call about an attempted theft. One officer was temporarily blinded, but neither teen got away.
On Monday, suspects in a stolen car rammed two police vehicles after the cops trapped them in the McDonald’s drive-thru on McBride. Police …

If you live near the 800 block of McBride, you may have heard a sound like a gunshot early Monday morning. Canadian Press has the scoop on what happened:
NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. — A woman is recovering from what police in New Westminster, B.C. are calling a minor injury after she was shot in the shoulder as officers tried to arrest four people in a suspected stolen car.
The incident happened at around 1 a.m. Monday morning when two police cruisers tried to box in the possibly stolen car in the drive-thru …

Shocking details have come out regarding a recent violent break-in in New West. The victim was an apartment manager – a single mother who was sleeping next to her four-year-old child – when the thugs came in and beat her, demanding the building’s rent money.
A home invasion in New Westminster has left a single mother living in fear and in dire financial straits.
A man and a woman burst into her ground-floor apartment around 12:30 a.m. on Jan. 3, looking for money.
They laid a severe beating on her that required 43 …