County of Brant Council received the Brant OPP Detachment Board’s 2025 Annual Report during their Administration and Operations Committee on Tuesday, July 21, 2026.
Jennifer Haley, Chair of the County of Brant OPP Detachment board, as well as OPP Insp. Jason McTaggart, shared several highlights from the report.
Marking the completion of the 2023-2025 Detachment Action Plan, McTaggart said the report demonstrated a positive progress across crime reduction, traffic safety and the community well-being priorities.
McTaggart went on to share the following data in regards to crime reduction:
- Violent crime fell 21.07 per cent from 242 incidents in 2024 to 191 in 2025
- Assaults and firearm-related offences declined from 112 to 94
- Sexual assaults decreased from 36 to 28 incidents
- Failure to comply with court order offences dropped from 100 to 81
- Break-and-enters continue on a three-year downward trend, decreasing from 104 in 2023 to 67 in 2025
While the data shows overall improvement in many areas, McTaggart said that property crime and fraud was one that continued to trend upwards.
“In 2025, we saw 679 [property crime] occurrences from 656 the year before,” he said. “Fraud remains one of the most common offences with 179 reported incidents in 2025. This has prompted us to continue with public education, fraud prevention presentations and enhance investigative capacity. Anyone who’s attended our community safety nights, we had two in 2025, knows we brought in subject matter experts to inform the public on what you can do to prevent being a victim of fraud. I’m proud to say though, over the last three months of 2026 we are seeing a downward trend in property crime.”
McTaggart continued, saying traffic offences are another priority for OPP, the big fours being speeding, impaired driving, distracted driving and seatbelt compliance. Officers laid 4,691 Highway Traffic Act charges and 205 Criminal Code traffic offences in 2025.
When it comes to community well-being, the Inspector shared that the detachment responded to 22,839 service calls, including 6,413 incidents requiring immediate police response.
He also added that a total of 878 victim service referrals were offered in 2025, and that a higher percentage of victims accepted support services.
Both McTaggart and Haley also spoke about the detachment’s purchase of two new, pedal-assist e-bikes for use in Paris, a number of community engagement and education opportunities with various agencies, and the Brant OPP Youth Academy.
Haley also reminded councillors that if their constituents are reaching out to them about any incidents, they encourage them to contact the police directly.
“Just a reminder that if you do have constituents calling you for various issues within the community, please ensure that they call 1-888-310-1122. Obviously if it’s an emergency, we want them to call 911, but we do need constituents to call that non-emergency line so that it is reported to police. If they don’t call in, we don’t know about it.”
Following their presentation, Councillor John Bell said he was happy to see a reduction in crime statistics. He also asked how the number of frontline policing hours have gone down 15 per cent since 2023 given the County’s population has increased by five per cent in that time.
“Our current service delivery model provides us opportunities to capture what we’re doing more effectively so those frontline hours that you traditionally have seen, are now being captured in a different way,” McTaggart responded. “I can assure you that the reduction in hours you’re seeing, are not a reduction in patrol hours of the people on the road. It’s just being captured differently.”
Councillor Jennifer Kyle also inquired how the reception has been from the local schools now that police have been allowed back in schools.
“Our school resource officer, PC Vitalis, has always had an open invitation at the Grand Erie District School Board and his engagement with the students is invaluable, in my opinion,” responded McTaggart. “PC Vitalis is able to mitigate some of those youth-related matters that could potentially end up in the criminal justice system, and he’s able to take that on first-hand and deal with that individual one-on-one. If we didn’t have that person in the school system, it could end up before the courts, and that’s not what I want to see our youth doing. I want us to be able to educate and correct those behaviours as quickly as we can.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
