45% crime solution rate below par

The Philippine National Police reports that its crime solution efficiency rate is 40 percent.

That’s four out of 10 crimes reported to the police, an “all time high,” according to the PNP.

As a former crime reporter, I find this below par.

When I was covering the Western Police District (now the Manila Police District) from 1978 to 1987, the police solved an average of six to seven out of 10 crimes reported to it.

That was a 60 to 70 percent crime solution rate.

Those were the years when the Manila Police lived up to its reputation as “Manila’s Finest.”

I can speak for the crime solution efficiency only of the WPD as I didn’t cover the other police districts.

But its performance was the standard in the country as Manila, being the capital city, had the highest crime rate at the time.

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Being a veteran crime reporter, here’s my two cents’ worth in drastically reducing criminality:

The emphasis should be on crime prevention, not crime solution.

Preventing crime before it happens is the primary job of the police; going after the perpetrators after a crime has occurred is only secondary.

Since the country lacks policemen—a ratio of 1:700 when the ideal should be one cop for every 500 people or 1:500—the PNP should buy more patrol cars, motorcycles or bicycles to cover a wider area.

Policemen on patrol cars, motorcycles or bicycles can easily get to a crime scene faster than those on foot.

At the same time, they make their presence felt especially if they are in strategic areas.

Hand in hand with faster mobility is the need for hand-held radios for each cop on patrol duty.

Radio communication makes for better coordination between street cops and their stations or headquarters and other cops on patrol.

In Metro Manila, where traffic congestion is a problem, cops on bikes or motorcycles can get to a crime scene within minutes as they can weave in and out of traffic.

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One preventive measure is the presence of uniformed policemen on the streets.

Unless he’s in cahoots with the cops, a would-be criminal would think twice when he sees policemen in uniform patrolling the streets or posted in strategic places.

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The efficiency of policemen in a country is measured by how fast they get to a crime scene after they receive the report.

In New York, cops arrive at the scene of the crime four minutes after it is reported to the police station.

In Singapore, it’s three minutes while in Hong Kong, it’s only two minutes.

In Metro Manila, policemen are at the scene of a robbery seconds after the crime is reported. Why? Because some of them are the robbers themselves.

This may be an old joke but it says a lot about our policemen, some of whom are dregs of society, instead of exemplars of good behavior.

Proof of that are a growing number of cases against policemen filed by ordinary citizens which are pending in various agencies like the National Police Commission, Public Law Enforcement Boards and the PNP’s Internal Affairs Service.