Well, we have over doubled the drop in crime in the rest of B.C. during this timeframe. I would suggest that no change in demographics would account for something like that.
I am a student of Bratton from New York. I believe a police force can make a community safe.
We came in and said that we would make Abbotsford the safest city in B.C. We haven't achieved that yet, but it is a goal we are driving towards.
Abbotsford didn't have CompStat when I came, but it's something we brought.
We have done the things I think you need to do to drive crime down. I believe a police force can make a community safe. B.C. and other western provinces have double the crime rate of Ontario, for example. We have always had much higher crime rates, and I don't think there is any excuse or reason for that. I think a police force can drive crime down to the kind of rates you have in Ontario.
I believe we have done the right things to drive crime down. The list of the things we've done is very long, but we have done things that actually reduce crime. We have taken the chronic offenders and arrested them. In property crime, we have gone after gangsters in a very big way to reduce the violence we were getting from organized crime.
My belief is that there are things you can do to drive down crime in a community. It's not just about demographics or social problems.