The City Prosecutor’s Office reported a 100 percent disposition rate for all the complaints filed for preliminary investigation and inquest proceedings from January to September this year.
Based on the data obtained from the said office, there were a total of 1,336 complaints received during the said period.
Of this number of complaints, 1090 were filed for preliminary investigation while 246 complaints were filed for inquest proceedings.
Further, there were actually 1,435 information filed which means that some of the complaints were actually dismissed while some were filed with multiple information.
The City Prosecutor’s Office claimed that 1,101 information were resolved through the preliminary or summary investigation while 334 information were resolved through inquest.
On preliminary or summary investigation, the top 5 cases in the city are estafa with around 40 percent of those filed in court followed by violation of Batas Pambansa (BP) Bilang 22 or the Anti-Bouncing Check Law with around 18.1 percent; theft – 6.83 percent; violation of the Violence Against Woman and their Children (VAWC) Act and rape with 2.8282 percent and 2.73 percent, respectively.
On the other hand, for inquest proceedings, of the 334 information, 205 were violations of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act or Republic Act (RA) 9165 which comprised over 60 percent of the filed information in the various courts.
Moreover, the information through inquest proceedings composed 7.42 percent theft cases while 4.6 percent were illegal gambling cases.
The staff of the City Prosecutor’s office expressed confidence that the performance of the office this period shows that people can contribute in lessening the commission of crimes especially during this pandemic.
According to the prosecutors, the ongoing pandemic did not hinder them from continuously discharging their assigned duties and responsibilities to appropriately dispose of the complaints filed in their office.
The concerned prosecutors underscored that the top 3 cases investigated by the City Prosecutor’s Office during the period are purely money-related so they advise the public to be extra careful with transactions involving money to ensure their hard earned money is protected and wisely used instead of losing this to questionable transactions.
The City Prosecutor’s Office is confident that the number of money-related complaints in the city will drastically be reduced if the public will be given the proper information to avoid entering into dubious transactions that are too good to be true that will lead to their loss. By Dexter A. See
