Index crime down 31%, but murders up 51% since Duterte took office

Index crime in the five months since President Rodrigo Duterte took office on July 1 is down more than 31 percent year on year, even as cases of murder went up by over 50 percent, according to data from the Philippine National Police.

According to the PNP's Crime Research and Analysis Center (CRAC) of the Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management (DIDM), index crime went down to 55,391 cases from July to November this year, down from 81,064 cases during the same period last year.

The Philippine Statistics Authority defines index crimes as: crimes which are sufficiently significant and which occur with sufficient regularity to be meaningful." Included in this category are murder, homicide, robbery, theft, carnapping, and physical injury.

The same data, released by the Presidential Communications Office (PCO), showed murder cases went up from July to November to 5,970 cases. There were only 3,950 cases of murder during the same time period in 2015.

The PNP data showed that other crimes against person — homicide (-1.59%), physical injury (-25.69%), and rape (-11.65%) — went down

Meanwhile, crimes against property showed a significant decrease by 42.48 percent during the same time period. In July to November 2015, there were 52,075 crimes against property recorded. But this figure went down by 22,122 in same time period in 2016.

Overall, the crime rate went down by 12.44 percent with only 244,637 cases in July to November, from 279,378 cases in 2015.

"The Philippines is now safer from theft, carnapping, robbery, physical injury, and rape." Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said in a statement.

"I am calling on the people to continue cooperating with the police to further bring down crime incidents in the country," he added. —JST, GMA News