Greater Sudbury Police say crime rate dropping in city overall

Sudbury is getting safer, says a new Greater Sudbury Police report that shows crime in the city has decreased.

Incidents of violent offences and property crimes have dropped. Calls for service also went down by 1.6 per cent between 2014 and 2015.

Police Chief Paul Pedersen told CBC News he is happy with these results.

"You can see that there's decreases across the board. One of the ones that jumps off the scale is arsons. It dropped 40 per cent from last year to this year," he said.

"We know that part of that was because last year we had a rash of Nim bin arsons and, as a result of our efforts last year, we're not seeing that problem continue."

Pedersen said impaired driving offencesalso decreased by 8.5 per cent in 2015, compared to the previous year.

"You can see that just about every crime area is going down here in Sudbury," Pedersen continued.

"We all want to live in a safe community. We want our community to be safer and safer. And when we're speaking specifically about crime, I can statistically say that Sudbury is safer than last year."

Police will continue to work with different organizations in the city to keep crime rates down, he added.