The Belleville Police Services Board received statistics on the rate of calls for service involving persons with no fixed address (NFA).
This comes after resident Michael Keleher asked the board at its meeting in September 2023 to look into the data and try to compare it with other areas of the city.
It was specifically requested that the data be compared between the city as a whole, the Bridge Street United Church zone, and the Bleecker Avenue/Station Street zone.
Belleville Police Service’s Crime Analyst, who was not identified, came back with information but cautioned that the accuracy of the data gathered was questionable.
The analyst explained in her report that while searching through the service’s Records Management System (RMS) for persons with no fixed address, it would not necessarily mean that they were NFA at the time of the incident reported.
In addition, if the person was NFA at the time of the incident, but have since acquired housing, that would not be reflected in the search.
It was also noted in her report that the specific community zones referenced do not exist in the RMS. While the area exists in the system, the zones that cover them are large and therefore limited in being able to compare different areas of the city.
An example provided of this includes the Bleecker Avenue/Station Street zone in the RMS, extending all the way to Church Street and includes Grace Inn Shelter.
The following data was gathered by the analyst:
2023 Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) – Homeless Persons Data (Category in RMS titled “Homeless Persons*”)
- The zone that includes Bleecker Avenue, Station Street and the Banquet Centre had 93 calls for service involving persons with no fixed address.
- The zone that includes the Bridge Street United Church had 128 calls for service involving persons with no fixed address.
- The total number of calls in Belleville involving persons of no fixed address was 1022.
*It was noted in the report that these calls are manually inserted and depending on the type of occurrence other codes may be prioritized over the “Homeless Persons” category.
2023 RMS Profile Data – NFA
- The zone that includes Bleecker Avenue, Station Street and the Banquet Centre had 212 calls for service involving persons with no fixed address.
- The zone that includes the Bridge Street United Church had 287 calls for service involving persons with no fixed address.
- The total number of calls in Belleville involving persons of no fixed address was 3382.
The analyst concluded that the data can be analyzed either through the UCR clearing codes or RMS Profile Data. It was noted that there are significant limitations with both methods and the system did not capture the level of detail requested to allow for meaningful comparisons of the areas sought.
