Like the rest of the province, Moose Jaw saw a major jump in crime last year.  The annual Statistics Canada Report on crime severity shows a 9% jump on the scale with fraud and break and enters seeing the most notable increases.

Moose Jaw Police Chief Rick Bourassa says the story is very much the same for our community but our city doesn't focus on the severity index, because one major crime can throw the numbers off. Bourassa does track the actual incidents number of incidents and those statistics paint a better picture, but for 2016 it wasn't a pretty one, with a 20% increase in the number of crimes against the person and crimes against property.

"In terms of property crime we saw increases in breaking and entering and most of those were thefts from vehicles. So in the summer we... embarked on a project to focus on those particular incidents."

Bourassa says the early numbers show their new focus has paid off, explaining crimes against the person are down 5% and property crimes are down 34% when compared to 2016 but there is still more work to do as they attempt to figure out why there was such a jump.  He says there are often social and economic factors where the number of crimes increase.