Property crimes in Toronto higher than New York City: Study

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It may be difficult to believe but a new study shows the rate of property crime in Toronto is higher than New York City.

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According to the study published Tuesday by the Fraser Institute, data collected from more than 330 census metropolitan areas in Canada and metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S. from 2019 to 2022 show burglaries, thefts, and motor vehicle thefts were more than 40% higher in Canada’s biggest city compared to the Big Apple.

The study, titled Comparing Recent Crime Trends in Canada and the United States, found Toronto, Hamilton and Windsor all had higher rates of property crime than New York City, Detroit, and Washington, D.C.

“Ontarians are no doubt aware that the rate of property crimes in the province’s biggest cities is on the rise, but they might not know how bad it’s become relative to American cities to the south,” Livio Di Matteo, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute and an economics professor at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, said in a news release.

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The study, which focused on large urban areas, calculated Toronto’s property crime rate was 1,683 per 100,000 people. In New York-Newark-Jersey City, it was 42% less with a rate of 1,182 per 100,000.

In Ontario, London had the worst rate (2,855), followed by Kingston (2,653), Windsor (2,351), Guelph (2,103) and Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo (2,053).

“Crime rates in some of Ontario’s largest cities, while still historically low, are on the rise and should be of greater concern for both citizens and policymakers,” Di Matteo said.

Barrie and Belleville had fewer rates of property crime than Toronto.

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The study also looked at violent crime (murder, robbery, and assault with a weapon) over the same time frame and found rates were higher in American urban areas than census metropolitan areas in Canada.

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Memphis, Tenn., Anchorage, Alaska and Albuquerque, N.M. had violent crime rates of more than 1,000 per 100,000 population. American cities took the first 17 spots before Winnipeg entered the ranking with a rate of 675.1.

In Ontario, Thunder Bay had the highest rate at 546.1 per 100,000 people followed by Greater Sudbury (318.5), Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo (311.9), Brantford (278.8), London (265.6), Windsor (236.5), Hamilton (233.4), and Toronto (203.1)

Leading the province with the fewest violent crimes per 100,000 population were Barrie (142.8), Guelph (147.8), St. Catharines-Niagara (149.2), Belleville (152.6), and Kingston (158.7).

“To conclude, while the highest violent crime rates are in American MSAs, some of the highest property crime rates are in Canadian CMAs,” Di Matteo wrote in the study. “A key takeaway here is that some American urban areas are as safe if not safer than Canadian ones when it comes to both violent and property crime rates.”

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