Vancouver earned an international reputation this year with newspaper headlines trumpeting the area as a "playground for gangsters" and "murder city."
Despite a bloody gang war, there were actually fewer homicides in the Metro Vancouver area this year than in 2008 -- 56 compared to 58.
But Corporal Dale Carr, of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, says the difference is in the type of homicides police investigated.
He says there was a 20 per cent increase in the number of organized-crime and drug-related homicides this year.
Carr says the team has wrapped up 80 per cent of the domestic murders so far, but the solve rate on drug and organized-crime murders is much lower.
From January to July dozens of people were gunned down on area streets and in parking lots in what police said were targeted shootings.
