The Secretary for Security, Mr Cheong Kuok Va, said today that the police would make crime prevention and combating theft one of the priorities in the fight against crime this year. Mr Cheong said this when he announced the crime statistics for the first quarter of 2005, which showed a drop in offences against the persons and violent crime, compared with the same quarter last year. Latest statistics showed a total of 2,461 crimes were recorded in the first three months of 2005, an 11% increase (+258 cases) over the same period last year. Mr Cheong said that was mainly due to a 22.7% increase (+249 cases) in property related offences, namely theft and loan sharking, which went up by 21.9% and 76.9% respectively. Meanwhile, offences against the person, violation of social lives and violent crime had dropped by 1.9% (-10 cases), 10.4% (-22 cases) and 9.2% (-20 cases) respectively. Among the offences against the persons, 308 cases were physical offences, a drop of 6.4% (-26 cases). Criminal intimidation had dropped by 4.9% (-4 cases) while serious physical offences had increased from five cases to seven. Violent crimes continued to drop in the first three month of this year, Mr Cheong said – there were a total of 197 cases; a drop of 9.2% (-20 cases) was recorded, with a 12.6% drop in robbery (-11 cases), a 21.7% drop in extortion (-5 cases) and a 33.3% drop in murder, with two cases (-1 case). He said that the police had solved all four murder cases this year. On the other hand, juvenile crimes increased by 18.8% to 38 cases (+6 cases); and the number of underage people involved also increases by 36 people, to 86. Mr Cheong had the police would respond to the new crime trend and take the initiative in introducing more patrols, act and work more closely with the public and social organisations to promote awareness of crime prevention.
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