The Philippine National Police (PNP) on Wednesday said lower crime incidents will be sustained while the country is under community quarantine due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) threat.

Police Brig. General Bernard Banac, the PNP spokesman, told a virtual forum said peace and order situation in the country remained stable as they recorded a 55 percent decrease in crimes since the start of quarantine on March 17.

“Our crime incidents during the quarantine period decreased by 55 percent compared to the same period prior to COVID-19,” Banac said.

“Our assessment is this trend will continue while we are on community quarantine because the people are only staying at home and the movement is limited so the opportunities to commit crime for the criminal elements significantly reduced,” he said.

Despite the decreasing number of crimes, Banac said the PNP will always be vigilant and alert.

Based on the PNP's latest data, from March 17 to August 11, they recorded 12, 648 eight focused crime incidents.

Of the total, 1, 927 were murder, 468 were homicide, 2, 666 were physical injury, 2, 531 were rape, 1, 405 were robbery, 3, 114 were theft, 484 carnapped motorcycles, and 53 carnapped vehicles

When asked about domestic violence, Banac said though there is a decrease in PNP records, there might be some unreported cases because of the quarantine.

“We encourage the victims to report the incident… We have women and children protection desks in our police stations… it is open 24/7,” he said. Ella Dionisio/DMS