Crime lowest in five years, claims Police Commissioner

Police Commissioner Hussein Waheed has told media that 2014 saw the fewest reported incidents of crime in five years.

18,193 cases were reported to the police last year, he explained – a drop of 1.7 percent compared with 2013.

Haveeru reported Waheed as saying that theft – the most reported offence – was considerably lower than it had been over the past five years.

However, police statistics show that while reports of theft in 2014 had dropped compared to 2012 and 2013, they were still higher than in the three preceding years. Reported theft in 2014 was 26 percent higher than in 2009.

Comparing 2014’s figures with 2009, there were increased reports of robbery (4.9 percent), drug offences (32.6 percent), and domestic violence (69 percent). Reported cases of assault dropped between 2009 and 2014 by 44 percent, while traffic accident reports fell by 18.4 percent, sexual offences by 15.7 percent, forgery and counterfeiting by 41.6 percent, and vandalism  by 42.3 percent.

Waheed also noted that two-thirds of the 3,139 drug-related cases in 2014 were reported outside of the capital, Malé, which is home to around one-third of the country’s population.

Waheed told media on Thursday that 50 Maldivians were thought to have travelled abroad for Jihad, while noting that the unresolved case of missing Minivan News journalist Ahmed Rilwan had been the biggest investigation of 2014.

Source: Haveeru