Torre doubts Davao City police stations’ crime statistics

DAVAO CITY – Police Regional Office (PRO)-Davao region Director Police Brig. Gen. Nicolas Torre III said police stations here are allegedly manipulating the crime statistics to create a misleading impression of low crime rates.

Torre said in an interview that when he assumed as director of the PRO-Davao, he immediately ordered a blotter validation where his subordinates retrieved two blue blotter books from the Police Station 10 or Calinan Police Station.

TORRE (PRO-11 FB)

He said that these blotters, with hardbound covers, contained handwritten records of reported crimes since June 2, 2023.

Torre added that the books contained multiple false entries or were marked as “for record only,” meaning they were documented but not reported as actual crimes. “’Yan ang literal na half-truth (That’s literally half-truth),” Torre said.

Torre added that this prompted him to order the relief of the 19 police stations last July 8. DCPO changed leadership thrice within a day.

He believed that the previous low crime statistics issued by the Davao City Police Office were not factual.

Torre said that an entry recorded an incident of theft on March 4, 2024 as a “lost item.”

“You will not put it in the records of crime statistics because it is a ‘lost item.’ But when you read, ‘believed to be stolen inside Beer Plaza near Jollibee Calinan. But it is clear, ‘believed to be stolen,’ but that cannot be recorded. His station is still peaceful,” Torre said.

He said another entry dated March 2, 2024 stated that an owner of a motor vehicle reported to Calinan Police Station that his missing vehicle was discovered at the junk shop already disassembled.

Torre said that instead of being reported as theft of a motor vehicle in Calinan, the police station referred the reported incident to Talomo Police Station.

He said that law enforcement would be affected if the crime statistics were manipulated because authorities could not implement the right programs to deter criminal activities.

“Ang bottomline, hindi tama ang numero na pinagrereport ng ating mga station commanders na pinagpapalitan ko, and because of that hindi magiging tama ang programa na iimpelement natin (The bottom line, the number reported by our station commanders that I replaced was not correct, and because of that, the program that we will implement will not be correct),” he said.