Crime in Oakville's police district fell 17 per cent in the first half of 2026, Halton police mid-year report shows

What the report says

Halton Regional Police Service's Mid-Year Performance Report, prepared by its Police Analytics Unit and presented to the Halton Police Board on September 24, compares January-to-June 2026 with the same months of previous years. Across the region, 6,623 criminal offences were reported in the first half of 2026, 900 fewer than the 7,523 recorded a year earlier. That is a 12 per cent drop in raw numbers and, once population growth is counted, a 14.6 per cent drop in the crime rate.

Violent crime fell 18.4 per cent, from 1,292 offences to 1,054, with assaults down 16 per cent to 610, which the report calls the lowest six-month count since the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. Property crime fell 11.4 per cent to 4,929 occurrences, the second consecutive decline after five years of increases, and 22 per cent below the 2024 peak. Break and enter was down 22 per cent, theft 10 per cent, fraud 10 per cent and mischief 17 per cent.

Oakville's district

The report breaks the region into the service's three districts. In 1 District, which polices Oakville, the figures below are rates per 100,000 residents for January to June of each year, which the service uses to strip out the effect of population growth.

Oakville's clearance rate, the share of offences solved, moved against the regional trend: it rose to 43.9 per cent from 40.3 per cent, while the region-wide rate slipped to 36.2 per cent from 37.8 per cent. The report attributes the regional dip to the changing mix of offences, since violent crimes, which fell most, are typically cleared at higher rates than property crimes.

Auto theft and the road

Region-wide, auto theft occurrences fell to 509 from 542, a 6 per cent decline that becomes 9 per cent per capita. The report notes the category rose from 215 occurrences in the first half of 2019 to a peak of 796 in 2024 before reversing in 2025, and that the rate per 100,000 has now fallen 40 per cent from that peak, which it says positions the service well against its 2024–2027 Strategic Plan target of cutting auto theft in half.

Not every measure improved. Motor vehicle collisions across Halton rose 4.4 per cent to 5,177, driven by property-damage collisions; injury collisions were essentially flat at 467 and fatal collisions unchanged at two. Impaired-driving apprehensions rose 14 per cent to 244. Total enforcement, counting both provincial offence notices and warnings, fell 11.1 per cent to 24,750.

How Halton compares

The report also draws on Statistics Canada's year-end 2025 data for Ontario's largest police services, released in July 2026, and says Halton's 2025 crime rate was lower than every major police service in the province. It adds that Halton's crime rate has generally declined since the early 1990s, with a post-pandemic rise in 2021 and 2022 that returned the region to levels last seen between 2017 and 2019.