Police have laid charges in the year-old killing of a taxi driver, a violent death that stoked the fears of locals who believe Halifax has become a dangerous city.
Sergei Kostin, 40, who was working here while his family stayed in Ukraine, disappeared last January after picking up a fare. His burned-out car turned up days later near the poor rural community of North Preston and his body was found in April, about a kilometre away.
RCMP spokesman Corporal Joe Taplin said yesterday that 20-year-old Chaze Thompson, who has been in custody for the last 11 months on an unrelated matter, had been charged with first-degree murder. The suspect, who is from the Dartmouth area, is to appear in provincial court this morning.
Mr. Kostin's killing was one of a series of high-profile crimes that have shaken public confidence over the last few years. Heavy media coverage surrounded the swarming and beating of an elderly woman by teenage girls, the torture of a teenager by her female peers and the sexual assault of a 10-year-old girl by four boys aged 11 and 12.
Such highly publicized incidents helped fan local fears even as the rate of crime, as measured by police reports, has declined.
"With an increasingly aging population, fear of crime everywhere is going up," Don Clairmont, who prepared a massive report on local crime for the city two years ago, said yesterday.
But he pointed out that local crime, while declining, is still worryingly high and that people in Halifax are right to be concerned. "I wouldn't rush to say that the fear of crime and the perception of crime are on a different trajectory," the Dalhousie University criminologist said in an interview. He noted that crime is still higher than in the late 1990s.
According to the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, there were 5,113 violent incidents reported in Halifax in 1998. That rose to a high of 8,730 in 2004 before starting to decline, dipping back to 6,747 in 2008.
When he released his 2008 report, Prof. Clairmont warned that Halifax, which relies on students and tourism, had a crime level that was risking its future. Yesterday, despite the charges in the Kostin case, he acknowledged that he may have been naive in expecting rapid results.
"The city has responded and the police have responded," he said. "The jury is still very much out on whether they have made a significant long-term effect."