Prince Albert sees positives and negatives out of 2025 crime statistics

That uptick in firearms seizures would be the highlight of the 2025 stats, but the increase in arsons is likely the lowlight. Arsons have been slowly on the rise in the last five years, averaging an increase of about 4.3 more cases per year. However, 2025 jumped up by 24 more cases, up to 89 total in the year, and only six of them resulted in criminal charges.

What’s more concerning is that the number could be higher than 89. Nogier said during the meeting, it was revealed several arsons are not being reported to police.

It’s “problematic because we on our end, we’re seeing a significant uptick, but fire is also reporting that they’re seeing significant upticks and they’re not calling it in because they feel sometimes that it just has a minimal impact, doesn’t require criminal investigation,” Nogier said.

While fire and police can do a better job of communicating with each other on some of these reports, Nogier also added the public needs to withhold judgment and let facts tell the story rather than public opinion.

“It’s hard to put my finger on how many of them are just attributed to a broken-down furnace or a fireplace versus an actual act of arson. We’re responding to you, and that’s the one thing that’s really important is the community doesn’t jump to a perception of what’s actually causing the problem. When you have a significant fire, like we did the Salvation Army fire at the end of the year, people will then resort to every fire being an arson, and that’s not the case. So we will do a deeper dive on the arson component so that we try and get a better appreciation for what the public needs to hear so that they don’t jump to conclusions.”

The sentiment of ‘not wanting to tie up police resources’ is a well-founded one however when it comes to missing persons reports. With 2,229 missing persons cases reported last year, that’s an increase of 390 cases from 2024 to 2025, and an increase of 1,181 compared to five years ago.

The biggest issue with missing persons reports, Nogier says, are the repeat reports such as kids living in group homes, who go missing and return in a day or two. The problem is, whether it’s someone who has gone missing due to suspicious circumstances, or if it’s someone who went missing and returned earlier that week, police still need to dedicate the same amount of resources to gather information on the missing person as quickly as possible.

“It’s a front-end load on every missing person, which means that we try and get as much information about where the individual was last seen, what type of clothing, who they may have been with. All take a substantial amount of resources and effort right out of the gate, and we triage each one as if they are a legitimate missing person regardless of their history and or circumstances. If we let our guard down and we say that because one individual has been reported missing 14, 15 times and we just don’t respond accordingly, that’s when we put ourselves in a really difficult situation because that person might be in need of assistance.”

Property crimes are down around the city for the second straight year, and hit their lowest in the last five years at 2,661 reported incidents. Nogier noted that while most property crime is down, they could be more effective if they had some more cooperation from the victims and witnesses.

“Sometimes these crimes are of a personal nature, and/or there might be a level of involvement that a victim may not be forth willing to come and present us with that information. So there are a variety of reasons why complainants are not always forthcoming with information and aren’t willing to participate. That then rests on us. Our ability to connect with the community, our ability to kind of get over some of those hurdles and barriers is what we continue to work on every day,” he said.

While there does seem to be a disconnect on reporting details of property crime, the same can’t be said for impaired driving. In total, 79 impaired driving occurrences in 2025 resulted in 70 charges, and Nogier credits that to an increase in people reporting what they see.

“The community is really being vocal about what they’re seeing. I mentioned it several times; we can’t be the eyes and ears of everything that’s criminal within our community. We do need the assistance of the public to help us in that regard. So having ears, having eyes that are very aware of impaired drivers, suspicious people approaching different areas of town, anything that helps us be more proactive in our approach or better response to that criminal activity is going to make us stronger as a community.”

Since putting a bigger focus on the use of Crime Stoppers in the last year, police have overall experienced a higher amount of useful tips coming in from the public.

“We’ve seen a substantial uptick in the amount of valuable information that’s led to an actual acceleration of an investigation and/or leading us to a suspect. So this is only indicative of a good move for the community in that once we start using platforms such as Crime Stoppers, it’s going to make us much more efficient as an organization. Just as recently as (Tuesday), we had a meeting with the public school system to say, ‘listen, is there an opportunity to bring a better awareness of Crimestoppers within our institutions so that young people can contribute to that?’ We know that the more people that are aware of criminal activity, the more people that are willing to respond and report it, inevitably we’re going to be better to respond.”

If you have a crime to report or information regarding any ongoing police investigation, you can report it using Crime Stoppers by clicking the link here, or by calling them at 1-800-222-8477.

—

Nick.Nielsen@pattisonmedia.com

by Nick Nielsen

Prince Albert sees positives and negatives out of 2025 crime statistics

What's Trending