Official crime rates are based on incidents reported to the police, but many crimes, especially petty offenses or those in marginalized communities, go unreported due to distrust of law enforcement, fear of reprisal, or perceived inefficacy.
Recently, the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) released data that showed the crime rate in Metro Manila fell by 37.06 percent in February consistent with earlier Philippine National Police (PNP) reports.
Last month, PNP chief Gen. Rommel Francisco Marbil brandished a supposed survey showing the overall crime rate had declined by 26.76 percent to mid-February.
He said the PNP recorded 3,528 cases of focus crimes from 1 January to 14 February compared to the 4,817 cases tallied in the same period last year.
Among the focus crimes, rape recorded the most significant decline, plummeting by 50.6 percent from 1,261 cases in early 2024 to 623 cases this year.
NCRPO acting chief Brig. Gen. Anthony Aberin said the NCRPO recorded 343 focus crimes in the metropolitan area in February from the 545 logged in the same month last year.
Focus crimes are murder, homicide, physical injury, rape, theft, robbery, vehicle and motorcycle theft.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” Aberin said in an apparent rebuttal of allegations that the numbers are managed.
Critics have said that crime incidences are being understated.
Official crime rates are based on incidents reported to the police, but many crimes, especially petty offenses, or those in marginalized communities, go unreported due to distrust in law enforcement, fear of reprisal, or perceived inefficacy.
Underreporting artificially lowers crime statistics, while unreported incidents fuel informal narratives of rising crime, further widening the perception gap.
Based on perception, however, Philippine cities are on top of the global list.
Crowd-sourcing site Numbeo placed Manila and Quezon City at number 2 and 3, respectively, as having the highest crime index globally, which was topped by Damascus, Syria.
Numbeo said it generated the statistics through surveys conducted by visitors to its website with questions designed like many scientific and government surveys.
“Each entry in the survey is assigned a number within the range of -2 to +2, where -2 represents a strongly negative perception and +2 represents a strongly positive perception,” it said.
To ensure data accuracy, it implemented filtering measures to identify and exclude potential spam, it added.
“Our algorithms identify users who exhibit spam-like behavior, and their input are not considered in the calculations. This helps maintain the integrity of the data and provide reliable results,” it pointed out.
The crime index is an estimation of the overall level of crime in each city or country.
Law enforcement agencies might downplay or reclassify incidents to improve statistics. For instance, a robbery could be logged as a “theft,” which is a less severe crime category, or not recorded at all if it’s deemed minor or unresolved.
Index crimes (e.g., murder, rape, theft), which the PNP tracks closely, might be selectively reported to show progress, while non-index crimes (e.g., minor disputes, vandalism) are ignored, skewing the overall picture. The PNP’s claim of a drop in crime initially in 2025 compared to 2024 could reflect such selective logging.
During the previous regime’s war on drugs, official crime statistics dropped significantly with a 61.87-percent reduction in index crimes from 2016 to 2018 to 2022 to 2024, yet thousands of extrajudicial killings were supposedly excluded or vaguely categorized as “deaths under investigation.” This suggested a pattern of selective reporting that could persist in less overt forms.
Widespread distrust in official figures, often expressed on platforms like X, suggests a belief that statistics are manipulated or “cooked.”
Posts frequently juxtapose PNP claims with firsthand accounts of petty thefts, scams, and violence, implying that unreported incidents are more prevalent than officially recognized.
An anti-crime advocate said a likely proof of massaged PNP figures is the stark social reality.
Rising poverty and inflation, as reported in 2024 and 2025, typically correlate with increased petty crimes such as theft and scams but the PNP data showed a 7.31-percent drop in major crimes from 2023 to 2024.
The glaring conflict in perception and the PNP figures may indicate that strong suspicions about window dressing the crime figures have basis.
