KUCHING:The crime index from January to March this year has gone up slightly compared to last year’s in the same months.
A total of 1,318 crime cases were reported in Sarawak from Jan 1 to March 20 compared to 1,254 last year.
Despite this, a top police officer assured that the situation was well under control.
“This comparison shows that crime cases have increased by as much as 5.10 per cent this year,” Sarawak Deputy Commissioner of Police Dato Pahlawan Mohd Dzuraidi Ibrahim said during the 212th Police Day celebration at the Sarawak police headquarters here yesterday.
He said violent crimes had shown a decrease of 12.63 per cent with 173 cases reported from Jan 1 to March 20 compared to last year’s 198 cases in the same period.
Commercial crime cases had shown a decrease of 29.26 per cent with only 290 cases compared to last year’s 410 cases.
Dzuraidi said among the high profile cases that were successfully solved in 2018 and this year were the package tour to Italy, France and Portugal scams, which involved 60 transactions and the loss of RM448,200.
“The hotel employment offer in Cambodia case was successfully solved. The case of the logging jobs in Liberia was also successfully solved.
“The number of drug traffickers arrested for the duration of Jan 1 to March 20 has increased as much as 73 per cent with 236 arrests while in 2018, only 136 arrests were made,” he noted.
Drug possession as of March 20 had seen an increase of 30 per cent with 470 arrests compared to last year’s 361.
In the category of forfeiture of property under the Dangerous Drugs Act (Forfeiture of Property) 1988, for the same period, police had confiscated RM875,937.49 worth of assets owned by drug traffickers so far.
