THE Benguet Provincial Police Office noted a drop of 481 reported crime incidents from January to August compared to the same period last year.
A total of 1,863 crime incidents were reported this year compared to the 2,344 recorded crime incidents in Benguet last year.
Superintendent Louisito Meris, deputy provincial director for operations, said that the decrease was attributed to the continuous checkpoints, red alerts status, and operations on illegal drugs which resulted to the lowering of crimes.
Meris added Benguet had an increase in the crime solution efficiency from 63.23 percent of last year to 67.04 percent this year due to more stricter campaigns.
Index crimes recorded by the Benguet police include murder, physical injury, robbery, theft and rape.
Theft remains to be the highest index crime recorded with 104 followed by 78 cases of physical injury, 66 cases of robbery, 32 rape, 11 murder, six car napping, and four homicide.
For non-index crimes involving violation of special laws, vehicular traffic accidents resulting to damage to property had 780 reported cases, followed by 399 cases of homicide and 206 other non-index crimes.
For the Cordillera region, Police Regional Office Cordillera Police Superintendent Virgillo Laya reported there was a decrease of 2,695 cases recorded last year compared to 1,100 cases this year.
Baguio City had the most number of crime incidents with 497 cases reported in January to July this year, followed by Benguet with 268 cases, and Abra with 100 cases.
Theft has the highest reported cases with 359, followed by 361 cases of physical injury and 145 cases of robbery. (Lauren Alimondo)