Lower crime volume recorded in Cotabato City 1st quarter 2017

COTABATO CITY --- The crime volume in all of the 37 barangays here declined in the first quarter of 2017, more than 60 percent lower than what the police logged in the same period last year.A matrix obtained from the city’s information officer, Halima Satol-Ibrahim, indicated that the four police precincts here registered a crime volume of only 105 from January to March this year.The city police recorded a 303 total crime volume in areas covered by the four police precincts here from January to March last year.The crime volume summary, supplied by the Cotabato City Police Office, also showed that based on records intact in the city’s police precincts there was a 65.3 percent decrease in crimes compared to last year’s statistics.The police precinct 1 only had a 55 crime volume record during the first quarter of 2017 while precincts 2, 3 and four only listed 43, 5, and 3, respectively.The police precinct 1 had 153 from January to March 2016, followed by precinct 2 with 129, precinct 3 with 9, and precinct 4 with 12 recorded crime volumes each.Superintendent Romeo Galgo, Jr., spokesman of the Regional Police Office-12 in General Santos City, said credit has to go to the local government unit of Cotabato City whose mayor, Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi, is feared for her iron-fisted policy in dealing with law offenders. The office of the mayor has actively been helping address security issues in all of the barangays in Cotabato City, Galgo said.Guiani-Sayadi has regularly been leading nighttime patrols of combined police and military teams on streets crisscrossing the city to maximize the government’s domestic law enforcement efforts.There were recorded deadly gun attacks in some spots here in recent months, but the local police confirmed the incidents involved people from outside of the city whose families are locked in clan wars.More than a dozen drug rings were also neutralized in joint operations by the city LGU, the police, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and the Army’s 5thSpecial Forces Battalion that started last year.