Abbotsford was named the murder capital of Canada for the second straight year.
However, it's a dubious distinction they hope to shake this year as increased police efforts have seen the number of murders plunge in 2010.
"We're sitting at one homicide in 2010," said Abbotsford police Const. Ian MacDonald.
That is down from nine last year, which earned them rogue's gallery status as the highest murder rate per 100,000 people in Canada.
"Last year... the vast majority of homicides that did occur were related to gangs and drugs and the one homicide we have this year to date is not," MacDonald said.
Abbotsford police created intervention programs aimed at teens and publicized an inventory of alleged gangsters.
MacDonald added a gang suppression unit could keep homicide numbers down over the long-term.
"The feeling is different," he said. "The calls that I got last year sitting in this seat were a lot more difficult. Certainly we had some ideas ... but now we have real positives with a number of initiatives I can name."
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Sketch
- Reporter
- Dharm Makwana currently serves as a web editor at The Province, British Columbia's best read daily newspaper. For more than four years he wrote on issues affecting the Lower Mainland for the province's third largest daily newspaper Vancouver 24 hours. Before arriving in Vancouver in January 2007, Dharm won the John Lott Scholarship for outstanding journalism at Centennial College. Since then Dharm has developed an interest in municipal and provincial politics, crime and policing and social issues including immigration, prostitution and trafficking. He is currently working on a series of stories involving Vancouver's sex workers.
Wisdom
I don't want to be that guy mumbling into his drink at a bar.
-Bill Murray
-Bill Murray