KUALA LUMPUR, March 25 — Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Abdul Hamid Bador today announced a significant drop in crime rates nationwide, but said burglaries and motorcycle thefts are still rampant despite the movement control order.
Abdul Hamid said that some were still taking advantage of the situation to commit crimes.
“While others are adhering to the movement control order, there are criminals who are taking advantage of the situation.
“Some of them we found out about it after they tried to ram through police road blocks, where checks later showed they were about committing these crimes,” he said during an interview on RTM’s Selamat Pagi Malaysia this morning.
Abdul Hamid also revealed that 370 investigation papers (IPs) were opened by the Bukit Aman Commercial Crimes Investigations Department on offences related to online scams during the movement control order.
“Of those 370 IPs, from there we then made 25 arrests and from that 11 of them were charged in court, involving losses of around RM2.9 million.
“This is just over items related to the Covid-19 outbreak like facemarks and other items; this means there are many who are still getting duped,” he said.
Malaysia entered the eighth day of the original two-week MCO today, but this has since been extended to April 14 to support efforts to break the chain of Covid-19 infections.
Latest numbers revealed by Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin later in the day showed 17 deaths, with 1,796 positive cases, and 183 who have recovered from Covid-19 so far.
Abdul Hamid today also reminded the public to refrain from revealing the personal information of Covid-19 patients, saying that releasing these to the public was an offence.
“Spreading such information can trigger panic and lead to the implicated person being shunned by the community.
“But, just as there are those spreading this information, those who test positive and later come out to deny being infected can also be considered as spreading fake news,” he warned.
