There’s less crime taking place in Greater Sudbury, with Statistics Canada reporting a 11.84-per-cent drop in the municipality's crime severity index last year.
At 66.36, the Nickel City’s crime severity index is the lowest it has been since 2015 and below the annual average of 78.15 it has recorded since amalgamation in 2001.
Meanwhile, Greater Sudbury’s violent crime severity index of 106.2, though down by 15.04 per cent compared to 2023, remains at pandemic-era highs. Prior to 2020, it had never reached triple-digits. It peaked in 2022 at 134.88, and the annual average since 2001 is 86.22.
These numbers echo last month’s reporting on 2024 crime statistics, at which time overall crime reported by Greater Sudbury Police Service (GSPS) was down by four per cent compared to 2023 and a drop in violent crime of 10.8-per-cent was recorded.
Where last month’s reporting included raw data, Statistics Canada crime severity index puts incidents through a weighted matrix in which crimes are assigned weight based on seriousness.
Greater Sudbury’s overall crime severity rate of 66.36 was lower than the 77.89 recorded nationally, while the violent crime severity index of 106.2 exceeded the national rate of 99.87.
GSPS Supt. Marc Brunette told Sudbury.com this week that a few crimes can disproportionately affect Statistics Canada’s crime severity index.
“There’s a lot of weight attributed to a crime when it is a murder,” he said, flagging the three homicides recorded in 2024 as a decrease from the five in 2023 and the record-hitting 12 recorded in 2022.
(Earlier reports cited two homicides in 2024, which was the running total until GSPS began investigating the July 2024 death of Pat Forgues as a homicide.)
Central to local crime severity index numbers is the broader trend of social disorder spiking during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Similar to other urban centres, we are faced with the opioid crisis with drugs and drug trafficking comes violent crimes associated with firearms,” Brunette said, later adding that with Greater Sudbury’s crime severity on a decline toward pre-pandemic numbers, and it appears the community is “trending toward a new normal.”
Despite a drop in both criminal incidents and crime severity, GSPS received more calls for service last year compared to 2023.
In 2024, GSPS received 64,752 calls for service, which was a slight increase from the previous year’s 63,626. Non-criminal calls increased by 1,520 (53,709 to 55,229), while criminal-related calls decreased by 394 (9,917 to 9,523).
Included in the approximately 85 per cent of overall calls for services police responded to last year which were not-criminal in nature, there was a seven-per-cent increase in mental health-related calls (3,122 to 3,344).
“Members of our Enhanced Mobile Crisis Rapid Response Team continue to work in collaboration with mental health and addictions clinicians from Health Sciences North to identify and address individuals who pose an elevated risk to themselves or others,” according to GSPS’s annual report, which noted the team was engaged 837 times last year, which was a 30-per-cent jump from the 645 times it was engaged in 2023.
This team “allocates time and resources to address individuals at risk prior to the requirement for apprehension,” according to the report, which also cited a 11-per-cent decrease in apprehensions under the Mental Health Act last year (945 to 844).
“We as a police service and myself as a police officer lean toward working with members of our community, agencies of our community,” Brunette said, citing “working together collaboratively to reduce these root causes” of social disorder as key to further lowering crime rates.
On this front, the Greater Sudbury Police Service Board unanimously declared a toxic drug crisis epidemic earlier this year in an effort to secure funding from senior levels of government.
There were a reported 134 suspected drug toxicity deaths in Sudbury and Manitoulin districts last year, which is on par with recent years but far exceeds the pre-pandemic 79 recorded in 2019. To the half-way point of 2025, there have been 65.
On a similar front, Greater Sudbury city council has continually pushed for more funding from senior levels of government to help tackle such things as homelessness, including a recent push for more transitional housing and shelter beds.
“The city is certainly doing their part, and we continue to work together,” Brunette said. “Our partnership with the municipality is very positive, very strong.”
Editor’s note: Crime data is fluid as incidents make their way through the legal system and are reclassified. Where there are discrepancies in numbers reported between this and previously published stories, this story uses the latest-available data.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.