Police reported crime in London climbs 7 per cent: Stats Canada

London saw a seven per cent increase in the number of police reported crimes last year, according to an analyst with Statistics Canada.

The government agency released its police reported crime statistics for 2018 on Monday.

Last year29,547 incidents were reported to police in the Forest City, compared to 27,902 the previous year.

"The things that were affecting crime in London were mainly breaking and entering and fraud," said Warren Silver, an analyst with the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, adivision of Statistics Canada.

There were 2,064 reported incidents of fraud in London in 2018, compared to 1,724 in 2017 and 1,761 in 2016.

As for break and enters, there were 1,916 reported incidents in 2018 compared to 1,679 in 2017 and 1,668 in 2016.

Reported incidents up across Ontario

Silver says the increase in these crimes doesn't make London an outlier.

"We looked at the whole region around there, and for Ontario, there were a number of things driving the increase in crime, but in that region particularly, we believe a lot of it is due to an increase in break and enters and fraud."

You can find a detailed break down of the numbers, organized by violation and community,here.

Silver adds that London's crime severity index (CSI) of 76.3 is only slightly higher than the Canadian CSI of 75.

"The CSI gives us not only the volume of crime, but how serious the crime is," explained Silver. "So we take all the different violations and we assign them a weight, based on how they are in the criminal code and how severe they are."

Overall, police across Ontario reported a total of 642,654 incidents of crime up from 599,314 in 2017.