Mayor debunks crime increase report

BAGUIO City Mayor Mauricio Domogan recently dismissed reports that criminality is increasing in the city.

Domogan during Monday’s flag raising program said he received a letter from Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Manuel Roxas II informing him of a 50.7 percent crime incident increase in 2012 compared to the previous year.

The mayor tagged the report as “inaccurate” citing different methods of gathering crime statistics were used by the Baguio City Police Office (BCPO) and was eventually forwarded to their main headquarters and the DILG.

BCPO Director Jesus Cambay Jr. backed the mayor, saying they have already informed the DILG of this inconsistency in the report.

Cambay said crime statistics in 2011 was collated using the Unit Crime Periodic Report and not the Geographical Information System used in crime reporting in 2012.

“In 2011, we were only reporting cases investigated or recognized by the police including those that are amicably settled,” he said.

But since June last year, the police began using a blotter-based crime data reporting to support the GIS, which records all kinds of crimes listed down in the blotter.

He said these include crimes listed in the blotter for record keeping purposes like lost items, reports of missing persons, pseudo-crimes such as traffic incidents and violations of city ordinances.

“If we look at it that way, it indeed increased. But using the same parameters used in 2011, where we used the Unit Crime Periodic Report, we decreased by as much as 22 percent in crime incidents,” he said.

He said the BCPO explained this through a letter sent to the police national directorate.

The current blotter-based system of crime reporting, he emphasized, is a more efficient way of reporting crime.

But he said there should also be more filtering of crimes for record-keeping purposes such as reports on lost wallets or cell phones compared to crimes including murder and other heinous crimes.