Carnapping incidents went down by 8.5 percent in the first six months of this year, compared to the same period in 2024, the Highway Patrol Group of the Philippine National Police (PNP-HPG) disclosed on Thursday, July 3.
PNP-HPG director Brig. Gen. Eleazar Matta said both motorcycle theft and carnapping of four-wheel vehicles went down from January to June 2025— 140 carnapping cases this year to 162 last year; and 964 cases of motorcycle theft compared to last year’s 1,002.
Matta said they are expecting the figures to go down amid the implementation of a policy of the PNP chief Gen. Nicolas Torre III for the presence of more policemen on the ground and the quick response team.
PNP-HPG spokesperson Lt. Nadame Malang said Torre’s order resulted in the deployment of more HPG personnel on the ground, especially in strategic areas and thoroughfares.
“Carnapping cases went down by 8.5 percent nationwide, and the order of our PNP chief to deploy more men has been working,’ said Malang.
“We have been helping local police forces in the conduct of checkpoint in order to further reduce the cases (of carnapping),” he added.
Earlier, Malang said the HPG has implemented strategies to realize Torre’s order to respond within five minutes through the deployment of more than 700 handheld radios to their regional field units.
“We responded to the order of our chief PNP to maximize the use of handheld radios. We have 733 handheld radios coming from our logistics office which were given to our RHPUs (regional highway patrol units) nationwide, Malang said.