More than 10,000 people were killed due to murder and homicide incidents across the country from January to July of 2014, according to data from the Philippine National Police (PNP).
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| More than 1 million crime incidents in 2013: A SWAT operative conducts checkpoint on a busy street in Metro Manila. |
Of the figure, 5,697 were declared as cases of murder while another 4,582 were classified as homicide.
Police describe murder as those which involve treachery and planning in killing a person. The offense is non-bailable and has higher penalties compared to homicide.
The number of people being killed in the country may be too big for 10,000 for just seven months but this seems to be a trend in so far as PNP statistics is concerned.
In 2013, 16,160 deaths were reported due to murder and homicide. The PNP data stated that 9,153 were murder cases while the 7,007 were homicide.
Sought for comment, Chief Supt. Reuben Theodore Sindac, PNP spokesman, said the sudden increase in the number of murder and homicide cases cannot be translated to sudden increase of killing frenzy last year but a result of the much comprehensive crime reporting.
Compared in the past years when police commanders would only declare murder and homicide cases which they were able to solve and on the verge of solving, they are now obliged to get blotter reports and crime incidents in other law enforcement agencies like the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).
Sindac said:
“The year 2013 is actually being considered now as the new standard in crime reporting because of the added parameters. So we consider data from 2013 and 2014 as the real picture of crime incidents on the ground,”
“So it is really not fair to compare 2013 crime data in the past years because there is really a big difference in terms of parameters of crime-reporting alone,”
For 2013, the crime volume reported across the country is 1.028 million. --Source: Tempo