ANGELES CITY – This city’s Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan expressed yesterday “relief” after the Philippine National Police (PNP) immediately corrected its report citing this city as second among the country’s chartered cities with the highest crime volume. A corrected report later said Angeles was actually fifth in lowest crime volume.
“I am relieved that the PNP immediately corrected itself, because figures of the local police say otherwise. According to ground reports collated by PNP-Angeles, our city in fact had lesser crime and drug cases compared to previous years,” said Pamintuan in a statement yesterday.
The initial PNP report issued last Friday also ranked Puerto Princesa as the fourth in the volume of crimes, but its correction said the capital of Palawan was actually the third among the lowest crime volume.
The corrected PNP list of top ten cities with the highest crime volume included Naga on top, followed by Mandaue, Pasay, Iloilo, Makati, Mandaluyong, San Juan, Marikina, Quezon and Santiago. Pamintuan cited city police report indicating that “all index crimes here declined from 1,019 cases in 2016 to 795 cases in 2017, and to 324 cases in July 2018. From July 2017 to July 2018, murder was down by 22.22 percent and robbery by 31.45 percent.”
“Drug related cases and arrests have also been declining, from 322 cases filed and 517 arrests in 2016 to 159 cases and 283 arrests from January to July 2018,” he also noted.
Pamintuan said “there have been no major drug busts since the discovery of an alleged suspected and abandoned drug laboratory in Barangay Pampang in 2016.”
“There were attempts to smuggle drugs through the Clark International Airport that were intercepted. But Clark is not Angeles City. It is an autonomous freeport zone, and as far as I know Clark authorities are in full cooperation in guarding against the entry of drugs through the airport,” he added.
Pamintuan noted that “Angeles City has been cited for three consecutive years as the best city police office (CPO) on the regional level and among the top three best CPO on the national level for 2018, by the PNP itself.”
He also said Angeles City has been “consistently cited by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, the Department of the Interior and Local Government, and the PNP itself for its anti- drug programs.”
