Homicide and attempted murder reached a 10-year high in 2020 as calls for service fell and other crimes saw significant decreases during a year like no other for local police.
Waterloo Regional Police Service released its annual report this week, providing an overview of the types of calls the force’s 794 police officers respond to, a break down of the numbers and a look at some trends in 2020.
The major crime unit had a busy year with eight homicide investigations, eight attempted murder investigations and four deaths in children under five years old, marking a 10-year high in the region.
As a result of those investigations, police made 14 arrests and laid 41 charges.
Police responded to 15 shootings last year, including five in Cambridge; on Morning Calm Drive, Forestview Drive, Birkinshaw Road, Hume Drive and Pretoria Road.
In one of those shootings, Mark Chaves was shot at close range at a home on Birkinshaw Road on Oct. 17, 2020. The next day, the accused turned himself into police and was charged with second degree murder.
The special victims unit was involved in 349 sexual assault investigations, 274 missing persons investigations, 104 human trafficking investigations, 483 youth protection investigations and 101 senior support team investigations.
In 2020, there was a 23 per cent decrease in the number of sexual assaults reported to police.
There were 1,339 overdose calls to police in 2020 and 98 overdose deaths.
The force’s cybercrime unit launched 17 investigations last year and was involved in 485 child exploitation investigations including one that involved the WRPS Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) team and a police agency in the UK involving their investigation of a 29-year-old man from the region. As a result of the investigation, police charged the man with several child exploitation offences and took two children into safe custody.
Overall, police laid 99 internet child exploitation charges and seized 681 devices to be analyzed.
Drugs and firearms investigations resulted in 210 charges being laid, 62 arrests, 32 search warrants, five vehicles seized along with $113,762 in Canadian currency.
Police seized over $2.6 million in drugs last year, including cocaine, meth, marijuana, heroin, ecstasy and fentanyl.
There was a slight uptick in the number of vehicles stolen in the region last year at 701, and 62 attempted vehicle thefts.
The total number of break ins last year was 2,197, down slightly from 2019.
Most of those were to homes, garages or sheds.
Police laid 826 charges for break-ins and theft, and made 120 arrests. They executed 27 search warrants.
There were 237 robbery calls in 2020, 121 arson calls and 663 sudden death calls.
Domestic violence calls totalled 6,185, leading to 3,644 charges and 319 warrants completed.
Bitcoin scams were one of the top ways thieves were able to get their hands on money that wasn’t theirs last year.
Victims of the extortion scam, in which they’re duped into thinking they’ve been called by Service Canada or the Canada Revenue Agency and are asked to make payment using untraceable cryptocurrency, led to over $646,000 in losses last year.
Overall, police responded to 2,900 fraud calls, laid 103 charges and investigated 162 counterfeit cases.
One investigation, dubbed Project Ferrari, led to the arrest of a 28-year-old man for identity fraud, identity theft and tracking identity documents produced at an alleged fraud lab in a business on Franklin Boulevard in Cambridge.
Stunt driving continued to be a problem last year, surpassing 2019 numbers with 143 more vehicles seized from drivers caught going more than 50 km/hr over the posted speed limit.
Last year saw 20 fatal injury collisions on area roads, 63 personal injury collisions and 285 vehicles and licenses seized.
Complaints against police were up in 2020.
Chief’s complaints, where potential misconduct is brought to the attention of the chief of police, totalled 39, a jump from the 30 received in 2019.
Of last year’s complaints, 15 came in for discreditable conduct, 10 for insubordination, two for neglect of duty and one for breach of confidence.
There were 48 public complaints for discreditable conduct last year and 15 complaints for unlawful or unnecessary exercise of authority.
Only one public complaint was substantiated, 33 were unsubstantiated, five investigations were terminated, four were resolved and 14 remain under investigation.
Every time a call is received from the public, an online report is completed, or an officer takes action, it’s logged as an “event” in a Computer Aided Dispatch program and is assigned an occurrence number.
The top CAD occurrences in 2020 were “administrative notice” 9-1-1 error calls, which totalled 50,890 events last year, followed by fire and ambulance calls at 39,910 and stopped vehicles at 30,220.
There were 97,135 citizen-generated calls to police in 2020, with the majority of them for what’s called “compassionate to locate.” In other words, police were asked to check on the well-being of someone about 15 per cent of their time last year, or 14,649 times.
Other top reasons for calling dispatch included bylaw complaints, unwanted persons, domestic disputes and driving complaints.
The cost of policing in 2020 came in at $195.3 million, close to $6 million less than budgeted, with salaries, wages and benefits taking up the largest share of those expenditures at $161.5 million.
Revenues, however, were down more than $2.6 million due largely to a drop in general police revenue.
