Dramatic year-to-year drop in Saskatoon homicides has no simple explanation: police

In the first weeks of April 2024, Saskatoon police were scrambling to deal with a cluster of homicides.

There had been five violent deaths in the first three months of the year, and then, in a two week span in April, three more homicides, including two in a 24-hour span.

According to Sasktoon Police Service (SPS) statistics, 622 assaults were reported in the city between January and March last year. This year, there have been 628 in the same period.

So while the number of assaults are close, major crimes investigators have handled only one homicide this year. It happened in January, and a suspect was arrested within hours.

Corey Lenius, a veteran staff sergeant in the major crimes unit, says spikes such as last year's are not an anomaly. 

"They're going to happen. They're volatile situations that occur, and you know, unfortunately, the major crime unit is a reactive unit. We come to it once it's happened already," he said in an interview.

"Many times it is a crime of opportunity, a crime of passion, a crime of alcohol and drug-related issues, and there's really no way to predict those homicides."

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Lenius says the SPS did take steps last year to try to deal with the rising number of violent deaths, focusing on known high-risk individuals, and creating a warrant enforcement unit to hunt for those wanted on outstanding charges. It also stepped up communication between its criminal investigation bureau and its patrol officers to focus enforcement.

In the end, Lenius says, it can come down to luck and professionalism. Police, paramedics and firefighters are better trained now in life-saving techniques, so people who have died from their injuries in the past might are now getting to  hospital alive.

"When you look back to last year … those eight early ones really took a toll on our unit and human resources and, you know, mental health and all those things," he said. "So yeah, we will take this as a win right now."