Fraud and drugs are driving Stratford’s crime rate up.
Maclean’s released its list of Canada’s Most Dangerous Places for 2019 on Monday.
Compared to five years ago, Stratford is the 12th fastest growing municipality when looking at the increase in the severity of crimes.
Researchers take the annual crime data that Statistics Canada releases every year and compares 237 communities across the country that have a population of at least 10 thousand and are patrolled by municipal police forces.
The crime severity level in Stratford had gone up from 53 to 86 in 2017 with fraud one of the major contributing crimes.
There has been a 23-percent increase in fraud over five years. Stratford had the third highest fraud rate in Canada last year.
Cocaine trafficking charges also doubled in the city over the same time.
Why we are seeing the increases in certain crimes wasn’t included in the rankings.
