Crimes of concern in the country has actually took a step backward as compared to last year, the Philippine National Police said, citing the slowdown of cases and improved performance in crime solving.
A tabulation of the so-called “focused crimes” in the first quarter of this year would indicate that there were not as many crimes as what occurred last year.
Breaking down last year’s crime volume in a quarterly basis, and comparing it with the incidents recorded in the first quarter of this year would show that the number of cases for each of the eight focused crimes, or crimes of concern, were all down.
For murder, there were 992 incidents on the first quarter, but taking the average last year, it was 1,068 cases per quarter.
Homicide on the first quarter had 248 cases compared to last year’s average of 253.
Of the sensational cases recently, rape and illegal drug trade have hugged the news headlines but the crime statistics shows that there were 1,773 incidents in the first quarter, lower than last year’s average of 2,090 cases.
There were 996 cases of physical injury in the first quarter but last year it averaged 1,313 cases, respectively.
Robbery and theft had 1,188 and 2,927 incidents in the first quarter, also lower compared to 1,242 and 3,242 cases last year, respectively.
Carnapping of both cars, taxi and vans in the first quarter recoreded 58 cases, as compared to last year’s quarterly average of 72. Motorcycles taken from owners posted 432 incidents, still lower to last year’s 469 cases.
The focused crimes are murder, homicide, physical injury, rape, robbery, theft and carnapping.
The PNP statistics said the total number of cases among focused crimes in the first quarter totaled to 8,614, down from the last year’s quarterly average of 9,750 incidents.
