Keeping up with P.E.I.'s rapid growth in an era of online crime has been a struggle, say police

A surge in population on P.E.I. in the last decade has coincided with increasing crime rates, and Charlottetown police Chief Brad MacConnell says police resources are falling behind where they should be.

"Our population has surged so much," said MacConnell. "It's hard for anyone to keep pace with that."

Since the launch of a provincial population strategy in 2015, P.E.I. has easily been the fastest-growing province in Canada, with a total growth of more than 20 per cent.

During that time, MacConnell said the number of calls for service has risen far faster than the population, with a 75 per cent increase since 2012. In the meantime, the number of officers Charlottetown Police Services employs has grown by only eight per cent.

"The population growth has put us more in a reactive stage to try to meet those demands," he said.

"Of course that's not where you want to be. You always want to be ahead of the curve."

Increased calls aren't the only issue forces are dealing with. The nature of crime is changing too. 

Today's officers are dealing with a surge in internet-based crime, including fraud, harassment and threats. The nonconsensual distribution of intimate images was an entirely new crime in 2017 and now generates more complaints that robbery. Crimes such as fraud are often perpetrated against Islanders by people who do not even live in Canada.

These are trends that require new approaches.

"We haven't seen a lot of effective policing in that space," said Prof. Tarah Hodgkinson of the criminology department at Wilfred Laurier University.

"That's not to say that any one police service isn't trying to address these issues. They just don't have training in these spaces. It requires a lot of technical understanding that we haven't, largely, given our police services."

Addressing these new crimes requires thinking that goes beyond finding ways to catch and prosecute perpetrators.

Prevention is more likely to be a successful approach, and that is multi-faceted. One aspect is talking to youth about how online ribbing can slide into cyberbullying — or even become criminal.

That's the kind of proactive programming MacConnell said is getting less attention these days.