By: Jennifer P. Rendon
Crimes against persons and property went down in Western Visayas in 2019.
Records from the Police Regional Office (PRO)-6 indicated that index crimes went down by 19.46 percent.
Index crimes include eight focus crimes – murder, homicide, physical injury, rape, robbery, theft, and carnapping/motorcycle theft – and special complex crimes like robbery with homicide or rape with homicide.
From January to November 2019, Bacolod City, which had been a venue for several broad daylight killings and had the highest number of illegal drugs confiscation, recorded the biggest index crime reduction with 44.36 percent compared to the same period last year.
Capiz province posted a 37.03 percent decline; Aklan with 30.93 percent; Negros Occidental with 23.14 percent; Antique with 11.83 percent; Iloilo province with 10.06 percent; Guimaras with 1.96 percent; and Iloilo City with 1.46 percent.
A big decrease was noted in crimes against property.
Police Lieutenant Colonel Joem Malong, PRO-6 spokesperson, said theft cases went down by 27.59 percent while robbery also reduced by 27.42 percent.
Physical injury incidents also saw a decrease by 23.79 percent.
Rape cases also decreased by 6.32 percent. However, it’s still a big number given that the region recorded 548 rape cases in a span of 11 months.
Further, homicide cases went down by 5.58 percent and murder by 3.28 percent.
Carnapping of motor vehicles was unmoved at 6 cases and so does carnapping of motorcycles at 116 incidents.
While index crimes ebb, the special complex crimes have increased to 66.67 percent. From nine incidents last year, it went up to 15 this year.
A sharp increase was noted in the number of robberies with serious physical injury cases. From zero last year, PRO-6 recorded five cases this year.
Robbery with homicide also increased after it recorded five cases from only two last year.
Rape with homicide decreased by one case or 14.28 percent from last year’s seven cases to six this year.
PRO-6, on their other hand, has no recorded cases of kidnapping with homicide, kidnapping with rape, robbery with rape, robbery with arson, or arson with homicide for two years.
NEGLIGIBLE DECREASE
While index crimes have dramatically decreased, the total crime incidents (earlier known as total crime volume) only decreased by a mere 1.07 percent.
From 26,556 incidents in 2018, it went down to 26,269 incidents this year.
Crime incidents refer to the total number of crimes committed in an area over a period of time. It is computed by adding the total number of index and non-index crimes together.
Of this year 26,269 incidents, PRO-6 said that 13,067 cases are with the peace and order index while 13,202 cases belong to public safety index.
NON-INDEX CRIMES
As index crimes also decreased, so does non-index crimes in Western Visayas.
Non-index crimes are violations of special laws such as illegal drugs, illegal gambling, and even local ordinances.
From 10,065 cases, cases went down to 9,512.
In some instances, this could be interpreted that policemen conducted less police operations.
Records showed that there was a decrease of 5.24 percent in police operations and 5.1 percent in other violations of specials laws.
Among the cities and provinces of Western Visayas, only Iloilo City recorded an increase of the number index crimes by 8.55 percent.
Capiz province recorded the biggest decrease with 33.8 percent; Aklan with 14.08 percent; Guimaras with 8.75 percent; Negros Occidental with 4.62 percent; Bacolod City with 3.19 percent; Iloilo province with 2.98 percent; and Antique with 0.84 percent.
EFFICIENCY
For the period, PRO-6 recorded a slight increase in its Crime Clearance Efficiency (CCE) for peace and order index by 2.03 percent while CCE is lower by 0.46 in public safety index.
The figure is still considered high since CCE in peace order index is at 86.69 percent while 84.59 percent in public safety index.
CCE is the percentage of cleared cases out of the total number of crime incidents, while crime solution efficiency (CSE) refers to the percentage of solved cases out of the total number of crime incidents for a given period of time.
Meanwhile, CSE went up by 2.98 percent from 72.97 percent to 75.96 percent in peace and order index.
It, however, decreased to a negligible 0.2 percent from 84.51 percent to 84.30 percent in public safety index.
