Manitoba sets grim record with highest-ever homicide count, RCMP say

Manitoba RCMP say 2024 has been the bloodiest year on record, with the province setting a grim record of 56 homicides to date in the RCMP’s jurisdiction, which doesn’t include cities with their own police services like Winnipeg and Brandon.

That’s considerably higher than the number of murder calls Mounties have responded to in each of the past five years, eclipsing the previous high of 38 in 2022.

Supt. Rob Lasson told Global Winnipeg that the increase is concerning — and also puts a strain on officers, as the crimes have been scattered across the province, some in remote areas.

“Oftentimes, we’ll see an increased number of violent crime and homicides condensed into one area,” he said.

“As a police organization, when that happens, we’re able to work with the community acutely, and get into and find the root causes of the problem and hopefully bring that number down — and get the community to help.”

When that isn’t the case, and the incidents are spread across a large province like Manitoba, it makes it tricky to get police resources to where they need to go.

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“It causes extra pressure on our organization and for our investigators just based on the travel that’s required,” he said.

“Not only travel, but how do we get to a place like Island Lake in the middle of the night, or how do we travel up Highway 6 in the middle of a snowstorm?”

Lasson said the province has also seen murders with multiple victims in 2024 — a rarity for the region — including a five-person homicide in Carman and three victims in McCreary. RCMP analysts, he said, are looking at the data and comparing it to trends over previous years to determine whether it’s an anomaly or indicative of something ongoing.

Lasson said other types of crime are also on the rise — including incidents related to youth gangs, property crimes, and increased involvement of firearms in the commission of offences, and that social media has played a role in connecting perpetrators with potential victims.

“That contributes to an increase in criminal sophistication,” he said, “so criminals now travel everywhere and with social media, our offenders it’s easy to infiltrate a small, isolated community because a lot of these small communities have internet access now.”

The police service, he said, can’t reduce the crime rate on their own, and getting to the root causes means more collaboration with the communities the RCMP serves.

“As we approach 60 (homicides) for 2024, it’s very concerning. The police can’t reduce the number alone. We can’t address violent crime alone.

“We have to work with our communities, we have to gain further trust with our communities… because the key to solving these homicides or to prevent homicides is for people to talk to us. That is our key evidence — in every case, one or more people know what happened, not just the offender.”

0:53 Rural crime in Manitoba

&© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.