GEORGE TOWN, Jan 7 — Penang’s crime index cases rose by 143 incidents from 2018 to 2019, with most of it being violent crimes, according to police released today.
Deputy State Police Chief Deputy Comm Datuk Roslee Chik said a total 5,217 crime index cases were recorded in 2019 compared to 5,074 in 2018.
“There was an increase in serious crime cases of about 2.8 per cent,” he said during a press conference at the Penang police headquarters here.
Out of the 5,217 cases recorded last year, he said 51.7 per cent were solved.
Out of that, 1,354 cases or 26 per cent were brought to court.
Roslee said another 2,391 non-index crimes were also prosecuted from among the 4,196 non-index crime cases last year.
“So, overall, a total 3,745 cases were brought to courts which translates to 51.7 per cent,” he said.
Crime index cases refer to serious offences such as murder, rape, armed robbery, assault, criminal intimidation and vehicle theft while non-index crime cases refer to non-violent cases such as criminal breach of trust, fraud and corruption.
Roslee said the Narcotics Department seized a total RM14.906 million worth of drugs last year with a 138 per cent of arrest for trafficking and 166 per cent of arrest for possession.
He said the commercial crimes department also registered a 27.8 per cent increase in cases last year.
“We notice that fraud cases especially the Macau Scam increases each year,” he said.
Last year, a total RM181 million losses were recorded under commercial crimes, which is also an increase compared to RM142 million losses recorded in 2018.
He advised the public to be cautious to avoid being duped by such scams and not to trust any callers asking for their banking details.
He said there is also an increase in false reports cases where 17 false reports were lodged in 2018 and it increased to 28 cases last year.
“One of the recent false report cases involved a famous nasi kandar restaurant where the worker claimed to have been robbed but our investigations later revealed that it was not true,” he said.
He said there was also another case where the suspect had hired people to stage a robbery and lodged a false report claiming they were robbed of RM1.4 million worth of jewellery and cash.
“Our investigations revealed that the robbery was staged and we found the bag that supposedly contain the cash and gold, turned out there were only two stones inside and we believe the suspect had lodged the false report to make an insurance claim,” he said.
Roslee then warned the public to stop the “viral culture” of redistributing information about old cases that have already been solved and presenting these as new incidents.
“Some of these cases were from a few years ago, were solved and charged in court but suddenly, people bring it back and make it viral online as if it is new which leads to the police wasting our resources to investigate it only to find that it was an old case,” he said.
He also urged the public not to share fake news as this has led to police reports being lodged about the fictitious claims.
Spreading false news was a criminal offence under the Penal Code, he said before adding that this could also violate the Communications and Multimedia Act if the offence is performed online.
