KUCHING, Feb 12: The Sarawak Community Policing Association (SCPA) echoed Sarawak Commissioner of Police Datuk Ramli Din’s call against reckless statements on crime and safety in Kuching.
Its chairman Datuk John Lau Pang Heng opined that when one did not have the full crime statistics, they should refrain from making statements, particularly on the safety situation in the city.
Lau said the Kuching Crime index over the past five years had declined by 35.3 per cent from 2015 to 2019.
Crime index is calculated by the number of cases reported to the police against the total population of the area and divided by 100,000.
“A survey conducted by a PhD candidate of UNIMAS in 2018 from February to June confirmed that citizen perception on fear of crime in Kuching in 2018 was 20.7 per cent. It was much lower compared to Kuala Lumpur where at one time, it was 61 per cent as announced by the former Home Minister Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi. This means 20.7 per cent of the population in Kuching is worried about crimes. But 79.3 percent opinionated that Kuching was safe.
“Not only is Kuching a safe city, people’s trust from the survey of 500 respondents was 80.9 percent. The criteria being measured were police response time, police solving crime cases, police bringing safety to the neighbourhood, police trustworthiness, police working relationship with the people, and police friendliness,” Lau said in a statement.
He further explained that the survey showed strong links between fear of crime, physical and social environment, police and citizen crime prevention patrol, neighbourhood helpfulness and media.
“The survey also found that there is a significant relationship between these factors and fear of crime. The test of homogeneity of variable and its statistical significance was 0.001. This showed that there is a strong relationship between the factors affecting crime and citizen perception of fear of crime,” he added.
Giving an example, Lau said residents at Pisang Road West and Jalan Intan areas conducted patrols in the afternoon and evening, resulting in almost zero crime for the past 12 months.
Therefore, SCPA has called upon every citizen to participate in crime prevention, it is everyone’s responsibility to build a safer community and the need to unite with the police in fighting crime. —DayakDailyi
