By Glazyl Y. Masculino
BACOLOD City – The Negros Occidental Police Provincial Office (Nocppo) here reported a 36.66 percent reduction in crime volume from January 1, 2020 to July 1, 2020.
Based on the data provided by the Provincial Operations Management Unit (POMU) to Daily Guardian, index crimes or crimes against person or property decreased by 169 incidents in 2020 from 461 cases for the same months in 2019.
For the eight focus crimes, murder has the highest number of cases with 70, followed by rape with 67, physical injury-54, theft-39, homicide-27, robbery-26, and motornapping-9. No carnapping incidents were recorded.
Police Major Edison Garcia, POMU head, said crime volume decreased during the first half of the year due to the imposition of the community quarantine from March to present in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Meanwhile, Garcia said that non-index crimes increased by 7.95 percent with 1113 cases this year compared to last year’s 1,031 cases.
He said that the numbers of non-index crimes do not directly affect the crime rate because these are due to police-initiated operations, which included the campaign against illegal drugs, illegal gambling and other violation of special laws.
He said that police continue to intensify its campaign against illegal activities amid the community quarantine in the province.