Davao City Crime Stats DAVAO COPS TO MAR ROXAS: ‘YOU GOT IT ALL WRONG, SIR’

By Manny Piñol

In what appeared to be a public rebuke of the former Interior and Local Government Secretary and now Presidential contender Manuel Roxas III, the Davao City Police Office today said their former boss was wrong in his interpretation of the crime statistics recorded in Davao City.

The DCPO, a Hall of Famer in the annual search of the Philippine National Police for the Most Outstanding City Police Force, in a statement posted in its Facebook page said that the city’s recorded crime volume of 18,119 cases in 2014 included arrests made for violation the local special laws like the very strict Anti-Smoking Ordinance.

Davao City has several pioneering ordinances which are strictly enforced by the Davao City police like the Anti-Smoking Ordinance, the Anti-Discimination Ordinance which orders the arrest of and imposes stiff fines on those who discriminate against Muslims and members of the LGBT community.

Two other ordinances also empower policemen to arrest violators of the 1 a.m. liquor ban and parents of minors who are caught violating the city’s 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew.

Roxas, who is lagging behind in the surveys for Presidential contenders said that Davao City has the fourth highest crime volume in the country and its claim to be the safest city in the country is just “a myth.”

Roxas claimed that statistics from the Philippine National Police and the Department of the Interior and Local Government indicate that Davao City logged a crime volume of 18,119 last year.

Quezon City had the highest crime volume in 2014, at 40,433, followed by Manila (22,778), and Zamboanga City (19,089).

The DCPO stated that only 6,548 of the 18,119 crime volume recorded in Davao City were crimes against person and property which is only 36%.

The DCPO said that the remaining 11,571 (64%) is attributed to non-index crimes which are police-initiated operations that yielded positive results especially on anti-drugs and other special laws.

“They are not showing the true facts on this issue. Please share,” stated the DCPO in its FB post.

(Photo credit: Photos of Davao’s outstanding policemen and the police vehicles donated by the City Government to the city police downloaded from Google.)