High crime rate in NWT

Statistics Canada says the Northwest Territories has one of the highest crime rates in the country.

RCMP in the territories say they've been cracking down more.

Last year, there were over twenty seven thousand crimes committed here.

Almost five thousand of those were violent crimes.

Those numbers have been almost the same for several years now.

Staff Sergeant Terry Scott is with the Yellowknife RCMP detachment.

"They're not just minor offenses they're major assaults, sexual assaults, robberies and weapons offenses," Scott says. "They're things you don't normally see in the south, but here it seems to be a way of life."

Scott says every RCMP detachment in the Northwest Territories is over-burdened by its workload.

He says the detachment in Yellowknife is enforcing a policy designed to cut down on crime.

"We have a zero tolerance policy here in Yellowknife for intoxicated people. We've been picking up more people and getting them off the streets before they have a chance to get into trouble," Scott says.

Scott says the detachment in the capital is busier because of this policy.