NATIONAL Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) Chief Guillermo Eleazar maintained there is a downtrend in crimes in the region despite the release of a survey that shows the number of families who have been victimized by several crimes has increased in the past six months.
According to the Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey conducted from December 16 to 19, the families who have fallen victims to common crimes such as street robbery, burglary, and car theft increased by 1.5 percentage points from September 2018's 6.1 percent or an estimated 1.4 million.
Eleazar said the survey for the third and fourth quarter of 2018 is not significant, citing that since 2016, the NCR experienced a 54 percent index crime reduction for the first 30 months of the administration (July 2016 to December 2018) versus the last 30 months of the previous administration (January 2014 to June 2016), and 21 percent crime drop in 2018 from 2017.
“Yung sa survey na third quarter (versus) fourth quarter is not that significant. In fact, our data based on actual records and not through survey of respondents representing the population is different. Bumaba pa ng 7.5 percent,” he said.
Eleazar was referring to the eight focus crimes, such as murder, homicide, physical injury, rape, robbery, theft, car and motorcycle theft, and crime against property, which he said lowered down by 7.52 percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2018 as compared to the third quarter.
In particular, the record shows that murder incidents decreased by 14.86 percent; rape reduced 7.86 percent; robbery by 12.50 percent; theft by 9.64 percent; and carnapping by 31.48 percent.
Cases of homicide increased by 1.59 percent and motorcycle theft increased by 7.51 percent.
Eleazar said, though, that the NCRPO takes such survey as a challenge to continue their efforts to prevent more crimes and intensify the campaign against all forms of criminality. (SunStar Philippines)