Sharjah: The rate of serious crime in Sharjah fell 37 per cent per 100,000 people in the first quarter of 2020, according to Sharjah Police.
The decrease follows ramped-up efforts to fight crime, said senior officials during Wednesday’s the fourth remote media forum.
Sharjah Police also achieved 100 per cent success in arresting culprits involved in serious crime. Police attributed the lower crime rate to a new mechanism that involves tracking movements of suspects who were previously involved in criminal activities.
Those who committed serious crimes, such as murder, robbery and assault, are now behind bars. Perpetrators who had managed to flee the country were arrested later, it was said.
In most incidents, the police arrested the culprits before they could flee the country.
Brigadier General Ahmad Al Serkal, Acting Director General of Police Operations, confirmed that there is a noticeable decline in criminal cases in general, and serious crimes decreased by 37 per cent. The forensic laboratory dealt with 3,750 cases in the first four months of 2020 compared to 5,113 in the same period last year.
There’s was a notable decrease in theft as well.
14 deaths due to traffic accidents during first quarter of 2020
Brigadier Dr Ahmed Saeed Al Naour, Director General of Central Operations also said that there was a significant decrease in traffic accidents leading to death in the first quarter of 2020 compared to the first quarter of 2019.
A total of 14 deaths were recorded during first quarter of this year due to traffic accidents, a significant drop from 49 deaths recorded in the same period last year.
Begging on the rise
With the current pandemic situation and Ramadan, beggars have tremendously increased their operations however. “If they are caught, they will be transferred to shelters and treated with respect and provided all facilities until the airports reopen so they can be deported to their home countries. These people may be transmitters of COVID-19 as their rate of interaction is high,” he said.
Rumours
On reducing rumours in the current crisis, Brigadier General Arif Hassan Hudaib, Director of Media and Public Relations, explained that there is a partnership with the media office of the Government of Sharjah to monitor all rumours in this aspect, where the focus is on security and traffic awareness.
The number of beneficiaries of police awareness programmmes in all social media reached 1,025,000 people.
