Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 17) — The country’s crime rate has dropped by 10.14% in the first six months of this year compared with the same period last year, the Philippine National Police (PNP) said on Monday.
PNP spokesperson PCol Jean Fajardo said peace and order indicators, particularly index crimes, declined from 20,765 incidents in January to June 2022 to 18,660 during the same period this year.
Index crimes are comprised of serious crimes such as murder, homicide, physical injury, robbery, rape, theft, and carjacking. On the other hand, non-index crimes are violations of local ordinances and laws and vehicular accidents.
Fajardo said carnapping saw the highest decline of 28.9%, with123 incidents from January to June this year. For the same period last year, there were 173 carnapping incidents.
This was followed by physical injury with a 20.01% decrease (from 2,893 to 2,314) and rape with an 18.19% drop (from 5,025 to 4,111).
Incidents of theft also went down from 6,506 to 5,899; motorcycle theft, from 998 to 910; and murder, from 2,177 to 2,077.
Robbery, however, increased from 2,434 to 2,601. Homicide went up too from 511 to 525.
The figures, however, do not include cybercrimes which were earlier reported to have increased by around 192% nationwide, and by 152% in Metro Manila.
“We are now conducting a study to determine if these cybercrime-related activities could be included in our index crimes,” Fajardo said.
According to the PNP-Anti Cybercrime Group, a total of 4,104 SIM card-aided crimes were reported from January to June this year, compared with only 1,415 in the same period in 2022.
SIM card-aided crimes, according to PNP-ACG, include GCash-related transactions, text scams, bank frauds, and fake news.
The PNP-ACG, however, noted that it solved almost all of the reported incidents.
Fajardo said a technical working group was formed to evaluate suggestions to include cybercrime-related incidents since they are both crimes against property and persons.
