By Martin Sadongdong
The Philippine National Police (PNP) has assured that Filipinos continue to live "peacefully" as it vowed to continue strengthening its campaign against criminality despite President Duterte's recent remarks on the country's peace and order.
PNP Chief Director General Oscar Albayalde (Mark Balmores / MANILA BULLETIN)
PNP chief Director General Oscar Albayalde also blamed the government's detractors in painting a bad image on the current situation of the Philippines.
"We're living peacefully here in our country and everybody could say that the deaths of are all part of law enforcement that contributes to the improvement of our peace and order," Albayalde said.
"Although there are isolated cases of killings, siguro 'yan ang nakikita lang nila 'no and of course there are other sectors sa ating lipunan na hanggang ngayon they are portraying a bad image sa ating bansa (Although there are isolated cases of killings, that's what the are only seeing and of course there are sectors in our society which up until now, are portraying a bad image in our country)," he added.
In a speech last week, President Duterte took notice of the reported spate of criminality highlighted by the death of a pregnant prosecutor of Ombudsman, Mary Jor Ednaco-Tanyag, in Quezon City.
This triggered a command conference between Duterte and the top security officials to discuss how to solve the problem. However, Albayalde continued to deny there was an increase in the number of crime incidents lately.
Relatedly, the Manila Bulletin today obtained official PNP documents which showed that the national police organization has recorded an 18-percent decline in the number of crime incidents in the country from January to April compared last year.
Based on the Comparative Crime Statistics by the PNP, a total of 149,491 crime incidents were recorded nationwide in the first four months of 2018, which is lower compared to the 183,242 cases in the same period in 2017.
It translated to an 18.42 percent decrease in the crime volume, the documents further showed.
When it comes to the rate of crimes being committed monthly, the PNP tallied 35.81 average monthly crime rate (AMCR) or at least one crime a day. This translated to an 18.41-percent decline as the data is deemed lower compared to the 43.89 percent AMCR from January to April 2017.
However, the Philippines ranked as second least peaceful among countries in the Asia and the Pacific region based on the Global Peace Index, an international project of Australia-based nongovernment organization (NGO) Institute for Economics and Peace. The result of the study was released over the weekend