The decreased crime statistics in the past year do not match with the results of a global study that ranked the Philippines at the bottom of the list of safest countries in the world, a top official of the Philippine National Police (PNP) announced Friday, July 9.

PNP Chief, Gen. Guillermo Eleazar disputed the results of the study released by international monthly magazine Global Finance which put the country on the bottom of 134 countries in the list of safest countries around the world.

"Hindi tumutugma ang aming crime statistics sa ranking na ito. Ang ating mga kasamahan sa media ang mismong makakapagpatunay nito dahil araw-araw kaming naglabas ng crime situation sa ating bansa noong nakaraang taon kung saan makikita ang napakalaking ibinababa ng mga krimen (This ranking does not match with our crime statistics. Members of the media would prove this becasue we issued data on the crime situation every day last year where we clearly saw a huge decline in the number of crimes committed)," Eleazar said.

Since the start of the strict implementation of community quarantine in March 2020, the Joint Task Force (JTF) COVID Shield, then headed by Eleazar, had been releasing crime statistics in the country.

Eleazar said there was a significant decline in eight "focus crimes" namely murder, homicide, rape, physical injury, robbery, theft, carnapping of motor vehicles, and carnapping of motorcycles.

In October 2020, the PNP released crime statistics which showed that the crime volume declined by 46 percent during the first 200 days of the community quarantine. A total of 18,683 criminal incidents were recorded from March 17 to October 2, 2020, lower than the 34,768 crimes logged 200 days before quarantine measures were enforced.

In the same data, it showed that theft and robbery incidents recorded the most significant decrease with more than 60 percent reduction.

According to Eleazar, the Global Finance included three factors in making their list: war and peace, personal security, and natural disaster risk such as the risk factors from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Since natural disasters and personal security are among the factors considered, Eleazar said the effects of the Taal Volcano eruption "and other natural disasters that are beyond the control of the government" and attacks committed by local terror groups such as the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, the Abu Sayyaf Group, and various communist groups played a "big factor" on the ranking.

This is the reason, he said, why law enforcers have been aggressive in implementing the "whole-of-government" approach against local terror groups that are mostly based on non-military solutions.

"Nevertheless, we will take this latest ranking as a challenge to do more in terms of further improving the peace and order security in the country," Eleazar vowed.