ILOILO City – From last year’s 7,433 crimes recoded in this city from Jan. 1 to Sept. 13, this year’s crime figures within the same period dropped to 5,600 or a 24.66 percent decline, data from the Iloilo City Police Office (ICPO) showed.
Both index crimes and non-index crimes were down by 52.76 percent and 18.98 percent, respectively.
Index crimes are crimes against persons and property.
The index crime rate is a gauge of a locality’s peace and order situation.
“When you have a high index crime you have a peace and order problem,” said the chief of Police Regional Office 6’s (PRO-6) Regional Personnel and Human Resource Development Division, Senior Superintendent Henry Biñas.
Biñas was formerly the ICPO director.
Of the 5,600 crimes recorded, 67 percent (3,757) were traffic/vehicular incidents while 11.39 percent (638) were violations of penal laws.
According to Biñas, the most prevalent index crimes were physical injury and theft followed by robbery and rape.
On the other hand, the most prevalent non-index crimes were traffic-related incidents followed by violation of special penal laws.
Traffic-related incidents resulted to damage to properties (3,196 cases), injury (557 cases) and deaths (14 cases).
On violation of penal laws, Biñas said the most prevalent were violence against women and children and violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.
For other non-index crimes, the most prevalent were alarm and scandal.
Of the total crime volume, Biñas said 82.36 percent were “cleared.”
“When we talk about crime clearance, we mean charges have already been filed in court or the crime has been solved. The rule is ‘crime solved is crime cleared,’” said Biñas./PN
