BY CHITO CHAVEZ
The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) said Tuesday that the index crime volume in the country dropped by 46.66 percent during the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
DILG Secretary Eduardo Año made the announcement to debunk claims by “leftist groups’’ that deaths from the government anti-drugs campaign allegedly soared during the pandemic.
Disputing the claims of government critics, Año disclosed that the comparative data covering 183 days before and after the community quarantine showed the index crime volume decreased from 31,589 (recorded from September 15, 2019 to March 16, 2020) to only 16,849 (listed from March 17, 2020 to September 15).
Citing data from the Philippine National Police (PNP), the DILG said “all eight focus crimes all steeply went down during the same period including carnapping of motorcar (65.3 percent), robbery (61.36 percent), theft (60.04 percent), carnapping of motor vehicles (60.3 percent), physical injury (37.35 percent), homicide (24.78 percent), rape (24.27 percent), and murder (21.22 percent).
Año urged the leftists “to stop spreading fake news about this alleged spike in drug war killings that is not supported by any scrap of evidence’’.
“The entire PNP was mobilized for COVID response, the crime rate nationwide dropped significantly, our people mostly stayed at home, curfew was implemented, the streets are relatively quiet, and now they will claim that extra-judicial killings increased?,” Año asked. (Chito Chavez)
