Monday night's Portage City Council meeting heard the RCMP report for the fourth quarter of 2019.

Among the data was a jump in property crime, compared to the same time in 2018. Public Safety Committee Chair Councillor Sharilyn Knox isn't surprised.

"With what we've been hearing from citizens and businesses in our community," she says. "And those numbers reflect our residential (crime), it also reflects our business crime, that we are just seeing a lot more theft happening, all over our city."

Knox believes the justice system's not in a phase of incarcerating people.

"And so we are seeing numbers go down in our (correctional) facilities," she says. "We're seeing a facility close in Dauphin, but yet we see our crime rates going up. As a councillor, that's concerning, and so I'm going to keep asking the questions of our justice department, our higher level of government, to understand what's happening here to protect our citizens."

Knox feels recent crime forums in the city show citizens are becoming engaged.

"I think people want to be part of the solution," she says. "Or have an understanding of things. And that's what our crime forum was last week. We are continuing to work together to find solutions, to make small strides, but making sure that we have all of the right people at the table, and the stakeholders involved, is the only way that we're going to move toward that."