By Cheryl Jahn

PG’s Crime Ranking Dropped

Nov 24, 2017 | 12:32 PM

The Maclean’s rankings for most dangerous cities in Canada has come out. Three BC communities are in the top ten, but not Prince George. This community is ranked 11th of 229 Canadian cities.
For a couple of years, Prince George held the title of number one most dangerous city in the country. It’s a title Mayor Lyn Hall is glad to shed.
“Over the years, when we were ranked number one, it was a real hit for our city.  At the end of the day, it cost us in a number of ways. So it’s very good to see that we’re now quite a way away from that number one ranking.”
Melissa Barcellos, the City’s Economic Development Officer, has had to struggle with the bad moniker in her efforts to recruit industry and professionals to the community.  But she says her work focuses on the positives.
“We’ve done a lot of work trying to overcome that. Our Move-Up Prince George campaign is actually the tool we use to do that and make sure that we’re providing accurate, timely information about Prince George from the citizens themselves, so that when people search, hopefully, they come across Move-Up Prince George, as opposed to negative statistics that might be floating around the internet.”
All the communities are ranked based on a Statistics Canada measurement that compares crimes reported by police.