THE Philippine National Police on Tuesday said the number of murder cases recorded across the country has dropped despite the bloody war on drugs.
In the first eight months this year, the number of murder cases dropped 7.98 percent from the same period in 2016, the PNP said.
The PNP’s Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management recorded 6,391 murder cases from January to August 2017, 554 cases less than the 6,945 recorded during the same period last year.
Official government figures show a total of 3,811 drug suspects were killed in police anti-drug operations from July 1, 2016 to Aug. 29, 2017.
PNP-DIDM director Augusto Marquez said theft is the most prevalent crime this year, making up 32.65 percent of total index crimes within the same period.
Marquez said murder only accounted for 8.41 percent of the total index crimes.
The PNP has said peace and order has improved since it waged a stringent campaign against criminality.
National Capital Region Police Office Chief Superintendent Oscar Albayalde on Tuesday said the deaths that have occurred under the Duterte administration are non-state-sponsored murders, “bungled” police operations, and people taking advantage of the President’s campaign rhetoric, but not extrajudicial killings.
In an interview in News To Go, Albayalde backed the PNP report that there are zero EJK cases in the country.
He said that the deaths of teenage boys Kian Loyd delos Santos, Carl Angelo Arnaiz, and Reynaldo “Kulot” de Guzman are not considered EJKs but bungled police operations.
Albayalde insisted that Arnaiz shot it out with police, who did not know he was a minor, even though witnesses said the 19-year-old boy was on the ground pleading for his life when two policemen shot him dead.
A leftist group of farmers, the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, meanwhile, questioned the PNP claim that there were no extrajudicial killings in the country.
“The peasant victims of extrajudicial killings under the Duterte administration are not mere statistics. They were fathers, mothers and they had families. They were hardworking individuals who were killed because of their staunch upholding of their right to the land,” said Danilo Ramos, chairman of KMP.