{"id":164961,"date":"2026-08-12T09:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/164961\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T09:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:22:10","slug":"new-data-shows-stabbings-in-ottawa-are-down-this-year-has-the-city-just-been-lucky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/164961\/","title":{"rendered":"New data shows stabbings in Ottawa are down this year. Has the city just been ‘lucky?’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A total of 96 stabbing incidents has been reported to Ottawa police<\/a> so far this year, marking a decrease in stabbing-related injuries compared to the same period in recent years.<\/p>\n

In comparison, 124 incidents involving a knife or other sharp weapon were reported between Jan. 1 and Aug. 9, 2025, 153 incidents were reported during this same period in 2024 and 146 incidents were reported in this time in 2023, according to police data provided to the Ottawa Citizen.<\/p>\n

But there may not be any specific factors contributing to this year’s decrease, according to Irvin Waller, criminologist and professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa.<\/p>\n

“There’s no reason to suppose that there’s anything intentional in these reductions,” Waller said. “I think Ottawa has probably been lucky.”<\/p>\n

While there may be a decrease in the short-term, Waller noted that Canada is continuing to experience a long-term increase in stabbing-related homicides.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

An officer from the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) investigates the scene of a stabbing in Centretown on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026.<\/p>\n

In the last decade, an average of 224 homicides each year in Canada cited stabbing as the method used to commit the homicide, according to StatCan data. That’s up 14.5 per cent from the previous decade, when an average of 195 homicides each year in Canada were classified as stabbings.<\/p>\n

Trends are similar in Ottawa. Between 2016 and 2020, an average of 201 stabbing incidents resulting in injuries were reported to police each year. That increased between 2021 and 2025, when the city averaged 213 reported stabbings per year.<\/p>\n

So far this year in Ottawa, police say there have been six stabbing homicide victims from five different incidents.<\/p>\n

This means that stabbing was the method for all of Ottawa’s homicides so far this year except one, with the exception likely being the death of 19-year-old Majed Al-Ar on Feb. 11, which police classified as a “shooting incident”<\/a> on Bankfield Road near Manotick.<\/p>\n

Other non-fatal stabbing incidents that have recently occurred in Ottawa include two in the Rideau Street area<\/a>, one in Centretown and one in Craig Henry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How can Ottawa prevent further stabbings?<\/p>\n

According to Waller, a reduction in stabbings would make sense in jurisdictions where there’s a deliberate prevention strategy against violent crime. But Ottawa, he said, isn’t doing enough to prevent violence at its root cause.<\/p>\n

Ottawa has a Community Outreach, Response and Engagement (CORE) strategy developed by police, which focuses on reducing violent crime specifically in the ByWard Market<\/a> and Rideau Street area.<\/p>\n

But Waller pointed to Toronto, which uses funding from Public Safety Canada for its anti-violence intervention strategy and has seen some subsequent reductions in violent crime.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

An evidence marker sits next to a dot of blood as officers from the Ottawa Police Service, not seen, work the scene of a stabbing on Tuesday, July 14, 2026.<\/p>\n

“You’re basically focusing on the young men most involved in violence, and you’re reaching them and trying to get them back into school (and) into jobs,” he said. “We know that some of the reductions in Toronto are due to that.”<\/p>\n

The United Kingdom, he added, is also seeing declines in violent crime due to its deliberate strategies to reduce knife crime through social outreach and community violence intervention.<\/p>\n

“There’s a huge difference between only relying on increasing police budgets and actually doing the things that will make people safer on the streets, in their homes with intimate partner violence<\/a>, and in schools,” he said.<\/p>\n

Take control of your search results.\u00a0Make the Ottawa Citizen a preferred source<\/a>\u00a0on Google and see verified local reporting first.<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A total of 96 stabbing incidents has been reported to Ottawa police so far this year, marking a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[52954,61,879,615,28269,876],"class_list":["post-164961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-irvin-waller","tag-ottawa","tag-ottawa-citizen","tag-ottawa-police-service","tag-stabbing","tag-university-of-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}