Crimes down 47% during six-month quarantine: PNP

September 18, 2020

The Philippine National Police (PNP) said Friday crimes decreased 47 percent during the six-month implementation of quarantine rules against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19.

According to Police Lt. General Guillermo Eleazar, commander of the Joint Task Force COVID Shield, from September 15, 2019 to March 16, 2020  there were 31,661 criminal incidents under the eight focus crimes.

This went down to 16,879 from March 17, 2020  to September 16, 2020.

The PNP's eight focus crimes consist of murder, homicide, physical injury, rape, robbery, theft, carnapping of motorcycles and carnapping of vehicles.

Eleazar said the decline in the criminal incidents translates to an average of 92 cases per day during six-month, or 184 days of the community quarantine period compared to an average of 172 cases per day during the six-month pre-quarantine period.

The community quarantine was implemented last March 17 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eleazar said there was a significant decline in robbery, theft and carnapping of motor vehicles.

For robbery, there was a decline of 61 percent—or from 4,807 cases from September 15, 2019, to March 16, 2020 to only 1,867 in the same period. For theft cases, there is a decrease of 60 percent or from 10,553 to only 4,228.

These records refute speculations there would be an upsurge in crimes against property and looting due to economic difficulties, according to Eleazar.

Carnapping of motorcycles, which was considered common, had the biggest decline during the six-month quarantine period from 2,013 to only 693 while carnapping of vehicles also went down from 218 to  86.

Eleazar belied that there have been reports that seem to project that cases of murder and rape became rampant during the six-month quarantine period.

Based on their data, cases of murder went down from 3,197 during the six-month pre-quarantine period to 2,509 during the six-month quarantine period while rape cases went down from 4,580 to 3,446.

Eleazar also disclosed that cases of homicide went down from 819 to 612 while cases of physical injury decreased from 5,474 to 3,418.

In terms of area, Eleazar said the Visayas region has experienced the biggest decline in crime incidents with 50 percent reduction from 8,116 to 4,035. This translates to only 22 criminal incidents a day compared to 44 cases during the six-month pre-quarantine period.

As to Luzon, he said the average daily crime was reduced from 91 per day to 49 per day, or a reduction of 46 percent  during the pre-quarantine period to 9,046 during the quarantine period.

He said Mindanao recorded a 44 percent decline from 6,764 cases to 3,798 cases, or an average of 21 crimes a day compared to 37 per day before.

“We have been conducting analysis of the crime situation in the past six months in order to identify the best practices and security adjustments that we could replicate in other areas and eventually institutionalized in order to sustain this momentum,” Eleazar said.

All police commanders were ordered to sustain police visibility and beat patrol down and constantly coordinate with the barangay officials to intensify peace and order measures down to the community level.

Eleazar said during the  Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) from March 16 to June 1, criminal incidents were reduced by 61 percent across the country. Ella Dionisio/DMS