The Belleville Police Services board reviewed data on charges laid against residents and non-residents of Belleville in 2020 at its meeting Thursday.
Chief Mike Callaghan said he wasn’t surprised about how split the numbers were.
According to the data, 49% of the 4,444 charges laid by Belleville police officers last year were against residents of the city while 46% of them were laid against non-residents of Belleville.
The remaining charges were laid against people of no fixed address (5%).
Most of the charges laid were Highway Traffic Act offences, totalling 1,493 for residents and 1,577 for non-residents.
Criminal Code offences were second on the list with 489 being laid against residents and 332 laid against non-residents.
After residents of Belleville, Trenton residents had the most charges laid against them by Belleville police with 284, followed by people with no fixed address with 201, and residents of Quinte West with 187.
Chief Callaghan clarified that, although Trenton is part of Quinte West, due to the urban nature of Trenton and the rural nature of the rest of Quinte West, they were separated for the sake of the data.
Callaghan said that he was surprised by the 201 charges laid against those with no fixed address, saying that he had estimated it would be higher.
When it comes to the application of the data, Callaghan said that it’s simply too early to draw conclusions.
“When we look at statistics we look at them not in a finite period of time, but in a larger span of time and I think that pulling that data right now is truly just raw data, so I really don’t want to be in a position where I draw any conclusion based on anything on a short term basis. We really need, truthfully, about three years of data, of raw data, and then blend that all together and pull out various pieces that will help us in our approach to policing in our community which is an intelligence-led, statistical, crime-based approach to dealing with things.”
Callaghan said this is the first time they’ve analyzed this specific data and that continuing it in the future will allow them to extrapolate information in order to apply it.
