PNP releases incomplete crime figures

Philippine National Police. INQUIRER FILES

MANILA, Philippines — In an apparent bid to ease public fears of a crime wave across the country, the Philippine National Police finally announced some crime figures over a radio interview on Sunday.

But while Police Col. Jean Fajardo, spokesperson for the PNP, mentioned some percentages in a radio interview on Sunday, she did not mention the bases of these percentages, absolute numbers or comparative data over a similar period.

Fajardo said the number of crime incidents in the country recorded from January to August 2022 went down by 8 percent compared to data from the same period last year, but she did not say how many crimes have been recorded this year or how many crimes were recorded over the same period last year.

She mentioned that thefts increased by 8.42 percent and robbery also increased by 0.49 percent, but Fajardo also did not say the bases for these figures.

‘Expecting an uptick’

“We were expecting an uptick in these cases because we have eased out quarantine restrictions … but the rest like physical injury, murder, carnapping, homicide went down,” she added, again without elaboration.

Instead, she echoed the earlier remarks of Police Gen. Rodolfo Azurin Jr., chief of the PNP, who appealed to netizens last week to stop reporting crimes on social media because false reports were turning the crime situation into “crime hype.”

But Azurin himself appeared unable to handle statistics.

“In our analysis of crime data, it is apparent that the peace and order indicator—or the sum of both index and nonindex crimes—has decreased by 45.24 percent in [President Marcos’ administration],” he said during a visit to Camp Olivas in Pampanga.

But a check of PNP data showed that the total number of crimes (both index and nonindex) in the country almost doubled to 30,802 in July, a month after the Marcos administration took over, compared with 15,651 in June, former President Rodrigo Duterte’s last month in office.

The data also showed that the PNP solved more crimes in July at 86.13 percent (26,530), compared with 82.33 percent (12,886) in June.

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