Drug war in QC: Murders up by 90%

A year since President Duterte launched a bloody war on drugs, the Quezon City Police District (QCPD) is claiming success on its turf.

This is despite the 90-percent increase in the number of murder cases in the city, compared to the final year of the previous administration, as shown in QCPD records.

Chief Supt. Guillermo Eleazar, the district director, noted that of the eight index crimes in the city, only murder cases had gone up, with 402 cases recorded from July 2016 to June this year, from 211 in the 12 months prior to that period.

The additional 191 cases marked a 90.52-percent increase.

“Overall, when you look at it, the drug campaign has been successful but we have concerns to address,” Eleazar said in an interview on Friday. “In terms of murder…it should be stopped and we have to exert efforts to solve the cases.”

Cases of “deaths under investigation” in the city reached more than 360 starting July last year. Of these cases, only 8 percent were declared solved.

Records also showed that more than half of the killings took place in areas under the jurisdiction of the QCPD Batasan station, where at least 250 deaths were documented.

The station covers barangays Payatas, Commonwealth, Holy Spirit, Bagong Silangan, Old Balara and Batasan Hills.

Eleazar pointed out that these areas had been considered crime-prone even before the drug war began.

“Except for murder, the crime situation there has improved,” he said. “But we will exert more efforts for crime prevention, such as having more checkpoints and a review of previous cases for better intervention.”

The other index crimes in the city, which include homicide, robbery, rape and car theft, have all gone down in the past year, records showed.

As of this week, the QCPD has declared 19 or 13 percent of of the city’s 142 barangays to be “drug-cleared.”

The year-old campaign also saw the arrest of 6,300 drug suspects in the city.

“We thought we can do it in six months or one year, but even President Duterte said it might take until the end of his term,” he said. “As I see it, it will continue up to the next generation.”