I wrote on Wednesday about what the monthly Burnaby RCMP crime bulletin tells us about crime in our fair city, including the Edmonds area being targeted.
The bulletin always includes several maps showing where break-and-enters and vehicle-related thefts are taking place. It also includes that heat map that shows the crime hot spots based on recent reports.
For April, it shows how much criminals are picking on Burnaby businesses during COVID-19, which has forced many owners to close up their brick-and-mortar outlets and paper over windows.
You can see the map attached to this blog. The blue spots are break-and-enters at Burnaby businesses. The red spots are residences.
The red spots have definitely dropped from previous maps. Is that because more people are staying home during the pandemic? It could be.
The biggest cluster, of course, is in the Metrotown area, but others include Edmonds and around Still Creek. Still Creek gets pretty quiet at night due to a lack of housing in the area.
Crime analysts at the Burnaby RCMP detachment have reviewed statistics from mid-March to mid-April, focusing on crimes such as break-ins at homes and businesses and calls related to domestic violence, according to a news release.
Commercial break-in calls have seen the most dramatic increase, nearly doubling since the same time period last year from 62 to 122, according to the release, but police say that jump isn’t necessarily due to the pandemic since such calls have been going up since last October.
In recent weeks, however, the release says Burnaby RCMP’s community response team, bike unit, frontline and prolific offender suppression team have conducted regular patrols of businesses to ensure they are secure and that anyone looking to take advantage of closed businesses is stopped.
Residential break-ins, meanwhile, have gone down slightly, from 33 between mid-March and mid-April last year to 26 during the same period this year.
We’ll see as more businesses reopen and more people start leaving home more often how the numbers adjust.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
