Overall crime rates on the decline, Regina Police stats show

Crime overall in Regina declined last year, but homicides nearly doubled, while calls for service stayed steady. Donovan Maess has more.

Regina’s crime rate continues to decrease overall, according to statistics from the Regina Police Service (RPS).

While the encouraging trends are welcomed, others are not seeing the same decreases as others.

“For the end of the year in total, crimes against person and crimes against property were down 15.4 per cent for the year,” Chief Lorilee Davies told members of the Board of Police Commissioners Tuesday. “Which is a significant decrease over 2024.”

According to the report, property crime is seeing the most encouraging trend.

After hitting a five-year high in 2023 of 11,973 cases, RPS reported just 9,403 such incidents in 2025.

Property crimes include things like thefts or break ins.

Despite overall property crime decreasing, arson cases are up for a fifth-straight year.

In 2021, there were 315 incidents of arson in the community. Since then, cases have rose each year, nearly doubling to 598 incidents last year.

“Arsons are something we’ve seen trending upwards throughout the year,” Davies said. “We’re really going to keep plugging away at that issue.”

“Those fires are crimes of opportunity and in a matter of seconds, we can have somebody walking by in an alley, start one. They are really hard for us to catch people in the act,” she added.

Crimes against people like assaults also declined in 2025 from previous years.

After increases in such crimes in 2023 and 2024, there was a decline of 500 cases in 2025.

A total of 3,516 crimes against people were reported by RPS in 2024, which dipped to 3,029 last year, a decrease of about 14 per cent.

More troubling for police, however, is a surge in homicides.

Eleven people were killed in 2025, nearly twice as many in 2024 and surpassed the 10 homicides Regina saw in 2023.

“Homicides are something really hard for us to predict and be preventative,” Chief Davies said. “[They] can be tied to a number of issues. Some are drug related, some are gang related, others are domestic related, and there really isn’t one thing that we can do to prevent it.”

Despite that, police have laid charges in all 11 investigations.

“For a police service maintaining trust in the community, I think that’s an important piece of it,” the chief added.

SWAT team usage

In addition to releasing the monthly crime stats, RPS’ Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) Team also provided an annual update of its operations.

“Our full-time, full-strength team is 24 members. We have 23 males and one female on the team,” SWAT leader Sgt. Neil Coulthard told committee. “We also have the tactical support team.”

According to RPS, the full SWAT team was deployed just 21 times in 2025, down from 33 the previous year.

In addition to the full team’s deployment, tactical teams were used an average of seven times per day, responding to 2,668 calls throughout the year.

Of those, 180 were firearms related, 146 were weapons offences and 88 were arrests on warrants.

RPS says the numbers do not include the time spent and arrests made with its investigative units.

“We get called out for any hostage takings, active shooters, armed or barricaded subjects, high risk warrants, high risk prisoner transports and VIP transports,” Sgt. Coulthard explained. “Tactical support teams, again, we assist patrol with calls for service.”

“If we have a high-risk incident, we have those officers with the specialized training and equipment [who] may get there quickly,” Davies added. “They assist patrol officers and resolve a situation that could escalate before it does.”