PNP Headquarters in Camp Crame, Quezon City. (Photo from the PNP Facebook page)
MANILA, Philippines — Crime in the Philippines dropped by 10 percent in the first year and a half of the administration of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., Philippine National Police (PNP) chief General Benjamin Acorda said on Tuesday.
During a sectoral briefing in Malacañang, Marcos was told that crime went down from July 2022 to January 2024 compared to the period of December 2020 to June 2022.
“As presented earlier this morning before the president, we reported our accomplishments. Although seemingly, we saw that crime statistics improved – it went down by 10 percent,” said Acorda in English and Filipino.
Acorda, however, pointed out that there is much to be done about the rise in cybercrime cases.
“We need to focus on cybercrime – that is what we see slightly increased as reported in the last quarter,” Acorda said.
INQUIRER.net has contacted the PNP to see how much it has increased, but it has not replied.
Attempts to hack the websites of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), Philippine Coast Guard, and other agencies were blocked by the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).
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According to the DICT, the hackers came from China.
“It was a brute force attack to take down the OWWA, but it did not succeed because we were able to block it,” said Communications and Technology Undersecretary Jeffrey Ian Dy.