The latest stats provided to Kamloops city council shows a significant rise in residential break and enters through part of this year.

Stats provided by Kamloops RCMP Superintendent Jeff Pelley to council’s safety and security committee shows that through the April to July period this year, residential break-ins are up 32%, while break-ins at businesses were down by 39%.

“We’ve seen Breaking enters to businesses go downward, but then we’ve seen Breaking enters to residents come upward. We focused on the business corridors where we’ve seen an increase of crime and we see short term impacts there.”

Pelley says their main focus remains trying to contain the prolific offenders, who he suggests have inflated those stats. “Really trying to focus on those offenders that have conducted the most. I’ll call it damage, as you will, or impact in our community, to get the return on investment. But we also want to focus on those that are committing some of the trivial crimes and leading to more serious offenses.”

Pelley says the detachment has been increasing patrols to try to reduce commercial-based crimes. “Developed the crime reduction unit, the service levels with with that unit, we’ve stood it up we continue to focus on trying to increase that unit in its complement so they can be more focused on it.”

The latest stats show that from April to July this year, there were 54 residential break-ins, up from 41 the same period last year.