Downtown residents more likely to have negative view of Ottawa police, survey shows

The sign outside Ottawa Police headquarters on Elgin St. is seen in this undated photo. (Aaron Reid/CTV News Ottawa)

A survey prepared for the Ottawa Police Service suggests that people who live in the ByWard Market, Lowertown and Sandy Hill are more likely to have a negative opinion of the local police service and feel less safe than people who live elsewhere in the city.

The Ottawa Police Service citizen perception survey was conducted by the market research firm Advanis between May and June, sampling more than 1,500 residents across Ottawa.

Overall, it found perceptions of the police have improved compared to last year, with the percentage of citizens who rate the police force's performance as excellent or good increasing to 65 per cent in 2024, up from 54 per cent in 2023 and 52 per cent in 2022.

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But those residents whose postal codes begin with K1N – an area between the Rideau Canal and the Rideau River – were overall less likely to rate the police highly in most metrics.

The survey compared 142 people in the K1N area to 1,431 from the rest of the city, and found that 56 per cent of respondents who lived in that are rated police performance as excellent or good, compared to 65 per cent for the rest of the city. Seventeen per cent of K1N residents said police performance was poor or very poor, compared to 15 per cent elsewhere.

Downtown residents were also less likely than other residents of Ottawa to support how the police usually act, less likely to believe the police treat people with respect and less likely to believe the police provide the same quality of service to all citizens.

The survey also found that people who live in the ByWard Market, Lowertown or Sandy Hill were far more likely to say they feel unsafe walking alone in their community after dark. Forty-one per cent of downtown residents felt unsafe, compared to 16 per cent of residents in other parts of Ottawa. Seventeen per cent of downtown residents said they did not at all feel safe, compared to four per cent of citizens everywhere else. Downtown residents were also more likely to say they worry about crime "most of the time" compared to other residents; however, when asked about the change to the amount of crime in their communities in the last five years, residents who lived downtown were largely in line with residents elsewhere, with 58 per cent of downtown residents saying it has increased, 28 per cent saying it stayed the same and 14 per cent saying it decreased. For the rest of the city, 59 per cent of residents said crime increased, 29 per cent said it stayed the same and 12 per cent said it went down.

Downtown residents were more likely to say they had been a victim of a crime in the last 12 months (35 per cent) compared to other residents (28 per cent). Downtown residents who had been victims of crime were more likely to report personal crimes (78 per cent vs. 72 per cent) and financial crimes (50 per cent to 38 per cent) to police, but less likely to report property crimes (57 per cent vs. 64 per cent).

Forty-five per cent of downtown residents said they had high or very high trust in the police, compared to 52 per cent of residents everywhere else in Ottawa. The percentage of residents who said they had no or little trust in police was similar, with 20 per cent of downtown residents and 19 per cent of other residents.

Downtown residents did have some positive opinions of police. They were more likely to say Ottawa police were good or very good at assisting victims of crime (60 per cent vs. 56 per cent) and were more likely to strongly agree that police are sensitive to the needs of different cultures (15 per cent vs. 12 per cent).

In June, the Ottawa Police Service opened its neighbourhood operations centre on the first floor of the Rideau Centre mall, which is part of a new strategy aimed at tackling crime in the ByWard Market. The new strategy focuses on several "hot spots" in the Rideau Street and ByWard Market area.

As it stands, 35 per cent survey respondents who lived downtown rated the Ottawa Police Service as poor or very poor when it comes to working with neighbourhood residents, businesses, and community groups to improve community safety and well-being, compared to 25 per cent of residents elsewhere.

A presentation on the survey will be made to the Ottawa Police Service Board finance and audit committee on Sept. 5.