Bogus crime stats letter 'probably not by cop'

The widely circulated anonymous letter, which claimed that the police have manipulated the crime index, was probably written by someone who is not a police personnel. 

In a press release today, Bukit Aman police secretariat (public relations) assistant head Ramli Mohamed Yoosuf said this is because the letter contains too many inaccuracies. 

"We would like to conclude that, clearly based on the numerous flaws in the (letter, the writer), is not someone from the (police) force, (and does not have) any credible intelligence of the police operations, methodology, penal code (or) of the process of crime investigations," said Ramli.

He said this in concluding his 11-point rebuttal to the contents of the letter by the ‘anonymous police personnel’ and which has been circulated online . 

The letter-writer had claimed that the police have manipulated crime statistics in order to fulfil government key performance index targets. 

This is achieved through the re-classification of certain crimes - burglary, theft and causing hurt - using alternative sections of the Penal Code which will lead to such cases being classified as ‘non-index crime’. 

The police refer to ‘index crime’ as those involving violence such as break-ins and murder, while ‘non-index crime’ refers to crime involving an absence of violence such as gambling and counterfeiting.

Ramli said the writer was wrong to make this claim because statistics show that ‘non-index crime’ is waning as well. 

He said that, since the introduction of the government’s National Key Results Area programme in mid-2009, the combined data for ‘index crime’ and ‘non-index crime’ have been dropping consistently.