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update - february 26 | update - march 26

After just 38 days into 2011, Edmonton had already recorded seven homicides. At this rate, the city was set to register a year-end death toll of 68.

Toronto, a city of 2.5 million people, had recorded just 10 murders up to February 7th. Calgary had dealt with a pair while Vancouver had yet to see a homicide.

The numbers became headline fodder. While police viewed them as a statistical aberration that strained manpower, criminologists fell into two camps – with one comparing Edmonton's murder rate to the weather.

"Once you start hitting that homicide once a week, the strain on resources, the amount of detectives that are working the cases, they don't have the time to work them as much as they would if it was a typical one every 10 or 11 days," Bill Pitt said.

The Grant MacEwan criminologist expanded his view to include several homicides that occurred near the end of 2010.

"We saw the two young toddlers that were killed, we saw settling of accounts in a gangland slaying.

"We're looking at perhaps three or four in December, another six or seven now in January and February, and looking at the one out of town, the body that was dumped in Mundare, could conceivably have been murdered here in Edmonton."

Pitt believed alcohol and drug abuse, along with stress from unemployment and debt was behind the recent violence.

"Rather like the weather," retired criminologist Keith Spencer countered.

"Hot spells, cold spells. People get a little panicky," he said, referring to public concern.

Spencer said murders tended to come in clusters and that long gaps between them was also normal – a term he used to sum up the year's homicides so far.

"They are typical, for the most part, of the kinds of murders we have which are probably drug and gang-related, and the victims are usually known to the killer with the odd exception where we throw in maybe a domestic murder or an accidental thing that came from assault."

But 2011's rapid pace meant police had to look at temporarily re-assigning their resources.

"When you have these little flurries, clearly you have to increase your manpower," Spencer noted.

"But over the course of time it's part of the regular business of policing a large major city."

Overseeing that business was acting police chief David Korol.

"I'm concerned about the level of violence that we see in our communities," Korol said, adding that people need to learn to deal with social problems without resorting to violence that leads to incidents of murder.

"Many of them are senseless, fuelled by emotion, fuelled by alchohol, fuelled by drugs. So very often it's getting the message out there, educating the community how about to resolve differences differently.

"I would like to see us as a society arm our youth and other people with more tools than just one.

"Violence should not be our only tool and our only option."

While publicly stating ideals, Korol had to face hard question of overall public safety when officers had to be pulled off other assignments to assist in homicide investigations.

Korol noted that not all homicides were the same, with some easy and some complex, and that the shifting of manpower was temporary.

"If we have many more, and they're complicated, we'll have to revisit," he said.

It fell to homicide detective Dan Jones to answer media questions about what was behind the recent spate of murders – 14 since mid-November of the previous year.

In 2010, the city had tallied just two murders by February 7th, and didn't reach seven until May 21st.

Jones said the current body count was an anomaly.

"Are we busy? Yes," Jones said. "But we're managing.

"There's no way to plan for homicides. Homicides are not a trend-based crime. It makes us busy, we work hard, and hopefully we'll get a lull."

The homicide unit normally carries 19 officers: two staff sergeants, 15 detectives, plus two detectives working historical files – nearly 100 from the last seven years, with some stretching back to 1938.

"Unfortunately, some of the best work done by our detectives is on unsolved homicides," Jones said. "I'll never take credit for positive results, because I'd never take credit for an unsolved homicide."

While the workload carried over from 2010 seemed light (only five cases out of 27 were still under active investigation), pre-trial preparation for charges laid continued to draw on resources.

While some cases were relatively cut and dried, others were labour intensive.

Jones cited the September 2010 drug-related murders of Jesse Lee James and Emmanuel Amoah which tied up resources for several months. All told, twelve charges were laid against six persons in connection with both cases.

Every homicide gets equal treatment, Jones said, regardless of the circumstances.

"We speak for the people that can't represent themselves. They all get the same treatment."

Edmonton Police Service spokesman Clair Seyler couldn't explain the spike in the murder rate.

"Why this is happening, we don't know," she said.

Despite the 2011 numbers, Seyler said the morale of the homicide team was still good.

"The victims drive them," she said. "They're speaking for these victims. I don't know how they do it, but they do it."

Both acting chief Korol and Jones said 2011's murder streak was not unprecedented.

"This is not especially weird," Jones stated.

Records kept by the Last Link indicate there is no calendar pattern in the city's murders ... much like the weather.

While statistics may be of interest to media, criminologists and other armchair detectives, it remains unproven that those responsible for homicide have ever consulted public records before committing their acts.

To quote a popular phrase: shit happens ... and it happens in patterns when patterns are sought – read more »

Update - February 26

Two weeks and a couple of murders later, the Edmonton Journal's Todd Babiuk dug a little deeper into the issue with Det. Jones.

"Edmonton has an economy that, unfortunately, contributes to violence," Jones said.

"We're a blue-collar city with blue-collar problems, a port city in the middle of the prairies, with a lot of drugs."

Jones noted only one of the homicides so far in 2011 had been "random," a fist fight outside a nightclub. The rest were lifestyle-based or were committed by someone known to the victim.

"We don't have a Boston strangler or a Zodiac Killer," Jones said.

"Almost no random murders. If you're outside a drug or gang lifestyle, and you aren't in an abusive relationship, you're just fine in Edmonton."

Jones said recent oil-industry drug testing has played a part in the changing nature of drug choice in Edmonton and what police have to deal with.

"Guys who might have smoked marijuana off-shift started smoking rock," he said, explaining that cocaine clears the body much quicker than cannabis.

"I'd much rather deal with a kid high on marijuana than a kid high on cocaine."

Babiuk's story tried to place the issue in loftier terms:

"Even when we use terms of ironic endearment like Stabmonton or Deadmonton, we're expressing a spiritual malaise. We choose to feel it, if we feel it at all, as a reputation management issue."

As part of his coverage, Babiuk posted a video interview with two Journal crime reporters and a spiritualist – read more »

Update - March 26

Three weeks after the March 5th inner-city stabbing death of Gerry Oar came news of another stabbing, that of Bullen Ambassa – the year's 14th homicide.

That prompted another drawing of attention to 2011's unusually high homicide rate – and another bold prediction by a local crime expert that Edmonton could become the murder capital of Canada.

"It's a disturbing trend," Grant MacEwan criminologist Bill Pitt told the Edmonton Sun. "Let's hope it doesn't continue."

Pitt likely didn't recall that the title had been already been conferred on the provincial capital back in 2005 when Statistics Canada recognised that year's 39 murders as nation-leading.

Since then, despite a consistently high rate, Edmonton lost the murder capital moniker due to data being based on homicides-per-capita numbers.

Still, comparing January to March numbers over the last seven years, the city seemed assured to have a lock on the title come year's end.

This year’s toll is quickly catching up, Pitt noted.

"It's got people raising their eyebrows," he said. "We are not having a good year."

Pitt provided several reasons for the 2011 spike, including rising rates of domestic violence, higher incidence of alcohol abuse, and depression brought on by a long, cold winter.

"It is a perfect scenaria (sic) for a script written for homicide," he told CTV Edmonton.

But for criminologists – and for media who believe "if it bleeds, it leads" – numbers are simply what they make them ... and they could be worse.

While the official tally for 2011 stood at 14, police said that doesn't count the number of close calls.

"I tell you right now we could have double if it wasn't for the great work of paramedics," veteran homicide detective Bill Clark said.

"We're seeing shootings and stabbings and guys that are on life support."

When pressed for an explanation for the rise in crime, Clark said there were no simple answers.

"We'd be grasping at straws to come with any good reason, right? Our society has definitely become more violent in the last 20-30 years," he said.

Even Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel felt compelled to make comment in light of Ambassa's murder.

"It boggles my mind to think that people are solving their problems with a knife or a gun," he said.

City Coun. Don Iveson said the number of crimes didn't matter – but the number of them solved did.

The Edmonton police homicide section's 2010 clearance rate was 81%, and Iveson suggested that that was what citizens needed to focus on.

"It's less important how many there are and more important that we're finding the people who are perpetrating them and taking them off the streets," he said.

deadmonton - why edmonton? - the early-2011 murder rate