THE Police Regional Office-Cordillera (PRO-COR) recorded a continuous downtrend in crimes in the third quarter of 2018 while focusing on the effective implementation of its anti-illegal drug operations and the arrest of catnapping groups in the region.
In his 3rd quarter report to the officers and members of the Joint Regional Development and Peace and Order Council meeting at Bokod, Benguet, PRO-COR Operations Division Representative Senior Superintendent Homer Penecilla noted an 8.99 percent drop in the crime volume from July to August of this year as compared to the same period in 2017.
Index crimes in the region decreased by 20.23 percent from 269 to 209 cases while the non-index crimes indicated a 6.1 percent decrease or from 1,017 in 2017 to 955 this year with the province of Abra having the highest decrease at 33 percent of from 129 last year to 86 this year.
Baguio City and Benguet Province recorded the highest volume of crime incidents with 542 and 335, respectively, while Ifugao maintained its crime cases at 61 incidents while Mountain Province has 44.
The regional index crime recorded physical injuries with the highest number of cases at 30.62 percent followed by theft at 26.79 percent, robbery at 18.66 percent, murder at 8.13 percent, rape with 6.22 percent, carnapping at 5.26 percent, and homicide at 4.31 percent.
The average monthly crime rate recorded a decrease of nine percent from 35 incidents per every 100,000 population per month in 2017 to 32.66 percent in the 3rd quarter of this year while the average monthly index crime rate decreased by 20 percent from 7.35 percent to five crimes against persons and properties for every 100,000 population per month.
An improvement in the crime clearance and solution efficiency increased by .53 percent or from 80.14 percent to 80.67 percent with 939 cases filed from the 1,064 total crimes reported, while the solution efficiency also increased by 2.97 percent from 70.91 percent in 2017 to 73.88 this year with 880 cases solved.
PRO-COR’s notable accomplishment is the campaign against loose fire arms with 150 operations leading to the arrest of 39 individuals and the confiscation of 125 different firearms and 30 crim8al cases filed followed by illegal gambling with 24 operations, 73 arrests, confiscation of P44,414 and 21 cases filed.
Anti–illegal logging showed 29 operations in the region resulting in the arrest of nine offenders and the confiscation of 18,331 board feet of lumber, two chainsaw, four vehicles, and three cases filed.
Fifty–five illegal drugs operations were also conducted which resulted to the arrest of 61 persons and the confiscation of 226 grams of “shabu” (methamphetamine hydrochloride) and the destruction of 377,920 fully-grown marijuana and 91.55 kilograms of dried marijuana leaves and seedlings amounting to P85,779,357.
PRO-COR also neutralized six members of acetylene and bolt cutter gangs, confiscated three firearms, recovered P957,500, and the shooting of two fugitives aside from 350 arrests of most wanted persons in the regional, provincial, municipal and station levels.