Homicide rates in B.C. plummeted last year to their lowest level since statistics started being recorded, helping send Canada's murder rate to its lowest point since the mid-1960s.
At 1.8 per 100,000 residents, B.C.'s murder rate was down 31 per cent from 2009, while Vancouver's rate of 1.5 per 100,000 residents was down eight per cent.
This helped drop the national average to 1.6, down 10 per cent from 2009, according to a new Statistics Canada report that includes all murders known to police.
The total number of murders in British Columbia was 83, while Metro Vancouver, including West Vancouver, Richmond and Langley, reported 36.
Although Canada's crime rates have been falling steadily over the past 20 years, last year marks the first major drop to the homicide rate in a decade.
In the city of Vancouver, there were only nine homicides in 2010, half of the 18 the previous year.
A crackdown on prolific violent offenders, including anti-gang initiatives, is a major reason for the decline, said Vancouver police Const. Lindsey Houghton.
Project Rebellion targeted the city's gangs and led to 209 charges against 29 people. Vancouver police launched the initiative in 2008 after a spate of gangland slayings terrorized the city.
"There had been dozens of shootings in Vancouver, especially in south Vancouver," said Supt. Mike Porteous, who was in charge of Project Rebellion.
"There was a lot of public fear.
"We found within about a month of Rebellion, those shootings dropped to a fraction."
Police identified violent individuals and deployed the same types of investigative strategies used for homicide cases. Prolific offenders were put in jail before they committed any more crimes, Porteous said.
"Clearly it caused a reduction in shootings, because [offenders] were no longer at large," he said.
Another project led by Porteous called E-Patroon led to the "UN eight" arrests, one of the biggest gang busts in B.C. history. Eight men linked to the notorious UN gang were charged with targeted slayings that took place in 2008 and 2009.
The number of shots fired in Vancouver also decreased in the past year, he said.
The metropolitan area of Abbotsford-Mission - dubbed Canada's "murder capital" in 2008 and 2009 - is down to only four homicides in 2010 from nine in 2009.
Its murder rate dropped from 5.2 per 100,000 residents to 2.3, making it now the eighth-deadliest city in Canada.
Police initiatives have made Abbotsford "a horrible place to be a gangster," Abbotsford Police Const. Ian MacDonald said.
Police created a gang-suppression unit and held talks with schoolchildren and community members about gang violence.
Criminologist Neil Boyd said he was skeptical about reported massive changes in homicide rates from year to year.
"When there are only 500 or 600 homicides across the country, you can get swings of 20 or even 30 per cent every year," he said.
"It's dramatic and very encouraging, but we can't assume it's going to be a continuing downward trend."
He said the province has seen fewer gangland slayings than in previous years, but that gang killings represented a minority of murders.
RCMP spokeswoman Cpl. Annie Linteau said it's too soon to say what caused the drop in homicide rates across the province.
Among the provinces, B.C. ranks seventh for its murder rate. Quebec also reported the lowest murder rate since the 1960s. Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and Newfoundland are the only jurisdictions with rising homicide rates.
There was also a 20-per-cent drop in auto theft in B.C. last year. The only major crime category up in B.C. was sexual assaults, up 10 per cent from 2009.
