Crime rate around Somerset supervised consumption site lower than government suggested when announcing closure

Data obtained by CTV News Ottawa show the Ontario government exaggerated crime statistics at the Eccles St. safe consumption site. CTV’s Katelyn Wilson reports.

The crime rate around the Somerset West Community Health Centre did not rise to the figures put forward by the provincial government last year when announcing the closure of its supervised consumption site.

The drug consumption site at 55 Eccles St. was one of the first sites the government announced last year would close because it was within 200 metres of a daycare. In a news release announcing the move, dated Aug. 20, 2024, the province said, “the crime rate near the Ottawa site was 250 per cent higher than the rest of the city.”

Health Minister Sylvia Jones also told the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference that year that violent crime was up 146 per cent near the Eccles Street site.

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CTV News Ottawa asked Jones’s office for the source of the statistics that were shared in 2024 but has yet to receive a response. (UPDATE: The province responded with its data source on Wednesday. See further reporting here.)

Following the province’s statements last year, CTV News Ottawa filed a freedom of information request with the Ottawa Police Service for crime statistics in the 200 metres immediately surrounding 55 Eccles St. The results show that the crime rate and the number of violent crimes reported to police in 2023 were not as high as the minister suggested.

The Ottawa Police Service said the crime rate in 2023 for the West Centretown neighbourhood, where 55 Eccles St. is located, was only 14 per cent higher than the citywide average. The rate was 5,078.83 per 100,000 residents, compared with 4,430 per 100,000 residents citywide, according to police statistics.

Police also said there were 20 violent crimes reported in the 200 metres around 55 Eccles St. in 2023, down from 26 in 2022, a 23 per cent decline. This represents 0.2 per cent of all violent crimes reported citywide in 2023.

The number of violent crimes reported in 2017, the year prior to the supervised consumption site opening, was 12.

The total number of calls for service—not including cancelled calls, false alarms, and false 9-1-1 calls—was 905 in 2023, up 18 per cent from 764 in 2022 and down from 1,047 in 2021. There were 586 calls for service in the 200 metres around 55 Eccles St. in 2017.

There was a 158 per cent jump in the number of violent crimes reported in the area in 2018, going from 12 to 31. The number of violent crimes rose to 37 in 2019, then fell to 21 in 2020, and rose again to 35 in 2021, before falling in 2022 and 2023. The exact nature of each crime is unknown.

Data for 2024 was not included in the request because the request was filed last summer.

The Somerset West Community Health Centre was granted approval in early January to transition to a homelessness and addiction recovery treatment (HART) hub, which will not offer safer supply services, supervised drug consumption or needle exchange programs. The health centre’s supervised drug consumption site closed in March.

Residents say crime has increased since closure

Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster says the neighbourhood has seen an increase in crime and public drug use since the province closed the safe consumption site.

“Anecdotally, people are feeling really, really uneasy in Chinatown, and there’s been a huge difference since Somerset West Community Health Center was prevented from doing the lifesaving work that they were meant to do,” she told CTV News Ottawa.

Troster adds there has also been an increase in private clinics prescribing narcotics without approval or accountability from the community.

“This is a public health emergency and we need to be following the best evidence of what works to, number one, keep people from dying of overdoses and number two, to have safer and more harmonious communities where public drug use is not happening out in the open like that,” she said.

Some residents say the closure of the consumption site has changed the neighbourhood.

“The landscape of the neighbourhood has changed because now these folks are kind of dispersed everywhere, they don’t have one place to go to be able to address their needs,” one resident told CTV News Ottawa.

With files from CTV News Ottawa’s Katelyn Wilson