Timmins Police Service says violent crime calls are down so far in 2025

On Thursday, the police board in Timmins received updated information on crime statistics in the city for the first part of 2025.

The number of calls to Timmins Police from citizens reporting violent crimes like assaults, homicides, robberies and those involving weapons in Timmins are down so far in 2025.

Insp. Darren Dinel said the police received 198 calls related to violent crimes in the first three months of this year, compared to 228 calls during the same time period in 2024.

Dinel attributed the drop to the concerted effort officers have made to bring in wanted persons.

“We had extra officers that were deployed for that specific purpose,” he said.

“So, their only job for the day was to come out, make sure that they were pursuing people, grab the warrants that we have on file, go through the names, go to their addresses, locations that they’ve been known to frequent and make sure that they were pursuing them and getting them before the courts.”

Dinel said there’s also been a decrease in social disorder calls such as those regarding suspicious or unwanted persons. However, domestic disputes are up by about 24 calls and eight more missing persons have been reported.

Shoptlifing cases increased

While property crime calls are down, including those about break and enters and thefts from vehicles, calls about shoplifting have increased.

“In excess of 20 per cent, that we’ve noticed in the first quarter, again, that trend is continued from 2024,” said Dinel.

“So we’re still developing some initiatives and some responses, strategies that we can deploy. As we get into the summer months, as we’re starting that and we’re keeping a close eye on what those statistics are so we can respond to it and try and bring those numbers down, as well.”

Statistics aside, Chief Sydney Lecky said there needs to be more commitment from all levels of government in how the criminal justice system and its underlying issues – including bail reform – are addressed.

Lecky recently attended a conference where that topic dominated the discussion.

“One of my focuses … is that we need to address the concerns from the public about the lawlessness and the feeling of lawlessness,” said Lecky.

“And there’s a lot that’s missing from our current system in terms of holding offenders accountable. We have multiple offences happening before people are actually … put into jail and so addressing some of the reasons, underlying reasons for that, is really where I think we need to turn our focus.”

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Lecky said what he hears from the public is that people don’t feel that things are better today than they were even 10 years ago.

But Timmins police said they’ll continue to redeploy officers to areas of concern when needed, while the service continues to recruit more officers to reach its full complement.