BANGUED, Abra – The Cordillera recorded the highest decrease in crime incidents by more than 36%, from 11,165 cases in January to October 2016 to only 4,058 cases recorded for the same period this year.
The decrease in crime incidents in the region was aid to be the highest decrease in crime incidents among all the 16 other regions in the country based on the reports from police authorities who attended the previous command conference of the Philippine National Police (PNP) in Camp Crame, Quezon City.
In a report regarding the region’s overall crime situation during the fourth quarter joint meeting of the Regional Peace and Order Council (RPOC) and the Regional Development Council (RDC) held at the Provincial Capitol, the Police Regional Office (PRO) in the Cordillera stated index and non-index crimes likewise decreased by 58.48 percent and 26.1 percent, respectively.
Further, all the provinces of the region and Baguio City reported a decreasing trend both in their total crime volume and index crime volume wherein Mountain Province reflected the highest decrease of 53.58 , percent followed by Baguio City with 47.57 percent while the lowest was Kalinga with a decrease of 6.53 percent .
On index crime volume Baguio City registered the highest decrease with a whopping 70.13 percent drop, followed by Benguet with 50 percent and Apayao with 43.0 percent.
Relative to the breakdown of index crimes committed regionwide, physical injury is the most prevalent index crime in the region followed by theft, robbery, rape, murder, carnapping, homicide and cattle rustling. The PRO-COR cited that relative to crimes against persons, murder incidents decreased by 57.7 percent, physical injury dropped by 39.5 percent, rape dipped by 34.25 percent and homicide decreased by 7.90 percent.
On crimes against property, the report stipulated that theft incidents dipped by 71.56 percent, robbery dropped by 65.2 percent, carnapping by 51.46 percent and cattle rustling by 28.57 percent.
According to the report, physical injuries and theft had the highest share in every province wherein highest occurrences were from Baguio City and Benguet, with Abra following through.
The PRO-COR claimed with the implementation of Project Double Barrel, crime in the region had gone down since 2015 wherein during the said year the least crime recorded in a month was 501. The year 2016 still had the highest record of 486 incidents.
From the said period, it was reported that there was a noticeable decrease of around 50 percent and for the current year, further decrease was observed especially during the first months.
For this year, it was reported that crime incidents happen at 12 midnight while much more happens during the late afternoons. For the first ten months, there was a remarkable improvement both in the crime clearance and crime solution efficiencies wherein clearance increased by 13.39 percent, from 68.53 percent last year to 82.02 percent this year. Crime solution efficiency improved by 11.57 percent, from 58.08 percent last year to 69.65 percent this year. By HENT
