KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 7 — The police have denied manipulating national crime statistics after a crime watchdog alleged yesterday that the authorities had publicly released lower figures.
Yesterday, MyWatch provided the media copies of a letter by federal police CID chief Datuk Seri Mohd Bakri Zinin dated October 13, 2011 that recorded 17,882 cases of snatch theft and robbery without firearms from January to October 2011 compared to the published crime index of 7,324 cases; as well as 43,792 cases of burglary and house break-in the same period compared to the published crime index of 30,200 cases.
“This is manipulating my letter and statistics to show things are not right in the police force,” Bakri (picture) told The Malaysian Insider today.
“So I’ll give my PC (press conference) explaining further,” he added.
MyWatch, whose patron is former Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan, also said yesterday that the police had incorrectly calculated the case-solving rate for 2011 and 2012, pointing out that the police considered a case solved if they discovered a stolen vehicle without arresting the suspect.
The crime watchdog also said last month that the crime rate had gone up last year, pointing out that the overall vehicle thefts in the July-September period in 2012 had risen by 3.5 per cent, or 624 cases, in comparison with the same period in 2011.
MyWatch said serious crimes such as criminal intimidation, kidnapping, extortion and causing grievous hurt are classified as non-index crimes, which are not included in the national crime statistics.
The police divide crime into two categories, index and non-index — with the former defined as crime that is reported with sufficient regularity and significance to be a meaningful indicator of the crime situation, while the latter is considered as minor in nature.
Musa urged the police yesterday to reveal the crime statistics, saying that the public needed to feel that crime was going down.
The former top cop has previously accused the government of hiding facts about the crime rate from the public.
But the police issued a detailed reply last August to rebut allegations that they had manipulated crime statistics.
Putrajaya’s efficiency unit Pemandu said last July that index crime in Malaysia dropped by 10.1 per cent from January to May last year compared to the same period in 2011.
Pemandu had also earlier released figures to show that index crime had dropped by 11.1 per cent from 2010 to 2011, while street crime dipped 39.7 per cent in the same period.
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