Keep it real on Brandon’s crime

They call it “rosy retrospection” — a psychological tendency to remember the past more positively than it really was. Some experts suggest it serves a useful purpose in increasing self-esteem and sense of well-being, and may even make it easier for us to store long-term memories. Others say it is closely related to nostalgia, but involves perceiving the past as better than the present.

I was thinking about “rosy recollection” earlier this week, after reading several recent Brandon Police Service media reports that detail criminal activity in the city on a daily basis. The reports included the usual mix of drunk and disorderly conduct, shoplifting, breached bail conditions, assaults, break-ins and drug offences. They provoked the usual reaction — frustration and anxiety flowing from the perception that the nature and intensity of criminal activity in the city is way worse now than it was years ago.

The more I thought about it, however, I began to wonder if that perception was really true.

I was born and raised in Brandon. I fondly remember my classmates and teachers at Park, Earl Oxford, Neelin and Vincent Massey schools, playing on numerous sports teams and participating in several church and musical groups.

All of that was wonderful, but I also remember that Brandon had a “hard drug” problem in the ’60s and ’70s that claimed the lives of many young people due to overdose. The city had both youth and adult gangs that engaged in a range of criminal activity, including drug trafficking and violent crimes. I also remember people who died from collisions involving drunk drivers, along with reports of murders, arsons and teen suicides.

I remember rampant break-ins, vandalism, graffiti and petty vandalism. Before plastic bottles, the city had a huge broken glass and litter problem. It was everywhere. I remember when people had to put chains and locks on their gas barbecues in order to protect them from being stolen. Bike theft was as bad then as it is now.

Even worse, I remember a level of racism, bigotry and intolerance in the city that would shock people today. In particular, there was at least one cross-burning on the North Hill, near the old Fort Brandon site. I also recall that bullying was far more prevalent in our schools, making them more violent and far less welcoming than they are now. And I remember a school bus arriving at my school each morning, dropping off Indigenous kids from the residential school.

With a clear memory, can we honestly say “those were the days?”

When I was nine years old, my brother and I were robbed near our community centre by two big men who demanded our Unicef donation boxes. The next summer, I was grabbed by a huge man while I was riding my bike in the afternoon. He was drunk and beat the crap out of me when I said I didn’t have any money. He was convicted years later of murdering somebody else.

I say all of that to say this: Brandon wasn’t as crime-free “back in the day” as some think it was. Many of us may be suffering from a sense of “rosy recollection,” combined with a lower tolerance level for misbehaviour and turmoil than we had when were younger. There is also the possibility that some of us weren’t as well-informed about criminal activity in the city back then as we are now.

When we feel overwhelmed by the police reports, and feeling the perception that the city is much more dangerous than it used to be, we should check our memories for accuracy. That’s because it’s possible that the level of criminal activity in Brandon today is really no worse, and possibly less severe, than it was three or four decades ago.

If that is the case — and I think it may be — it has implications for the way we and others perceive our city and neighbours, and for the expectations we have for our police department and city council. That includes the city’s fast-rising police budget and the impact it is having on our property tax bills. There may be days when we feel Brandon needs a cop on every corner, but we should first ask ourselves if the situation is really so dire that it justifies such a costly response.

Let’s keep it real here: No city will ever be crime-free, and it would be way too expensive to even try to achieve that impossible goal. Let’s also acknowledge, however, that progress has been made on crime in Brandon over the past few decades. Given that reality it makes sense to discern what measures enabled that progress to be made and build on those strategies.

That effort will inevitably involve frank conversations and disagreements, but they should be based on reality, not rose-coloured misperceptions of the past.