Mayor's office blames the media for the spree of violence in Halifax. Now we know why we have a problem Houston!


Unfair to wrongly label city: mayor's office

Some local media have been full of alarmist commentary in recent days following several brutal attacks, fuelling concerns that Halifax is becoming a more violent place despite statistics that suggest otherwise.

The banner headline yesterday on the front page of the Chronicle Herald declared: 'Summer of fear.' Beneath the headline, it stated that the city had the highest rate of violent crime in the country, and the recent assaults had "shaken us to our very core."

But latest numbers from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics show that in 2006, Halifax and Nova Scotia as a whole had the fifth highest rate of violent crime in the country, and the rate was continuing a downward trend for the third year in a row.

"The thing that happens is you'll get a series of (crimes) very close together, which will skew the perception of what's going on and that's what's happened here," Crown attorney Gary Holt, who handles cases involving young offenders, said yesterday.

"I think in an analysis of the past year, compared to any other year, you wouldn't see necessarily any more violent offences."

John O'Brien, a spokesman for the municipality, distributed a letter yesterday concerning the Herald's headlines.

"It is unfair to our police services and the 99 per cent of the hard-working, law-abiding citizens of the (region) to wrongly label our community as the most violent in the country," O'Brien wrote.

http://www.hfxnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=58721&sc=89

Lies, damn lies, or statistics don't matter in this case... it is a matter of what citizens believe, and they believe they are unsafe in this city, epsecially after dark and especially around groups of young people.

I think the characterization by the Herald is accurate.