Crimes grow 12 percent in 2018, kidnapping, scams and sexual offenses raise concerns

There was an 11.7 percent surge in the number of criminal cases in 2018 when compared with the previous year registering a total of 14,108  cases over last year, the Judiciary Police (PJ) said yesterday.

During a meeting with the media, PJ representatives said that the crimes that raise the most concern involve cases of kidnapping (not related to usury for gambling), scams, namely the ones over the phone or internet, and sexual offenses, which have been growing more and represent an alarming trend to both the police and society.

As compared with 2017, the number of kidnappings  doubled in 2018 (from six to 12 cases), representing also fourfold growth when compared to the year of 2016. As the police explained on previous occasions, included in these figures are cases such as the unlawful detention of people against their will due to situations of dispute or debts that are not related to gambling, such as acts executed by taxi drivers during disputes with clients.

Causing even more concern to society were the criminal cases of a sexual nature, with special emphasis on the sexual abuse of children that increased by 50 percent year-on-year, from 16 to 24 cases.

Crimes of sexual abuse grew  at an even higher rate, such as prostitution or exploitation and sexual harassment, which registered last year respectively, seven and 10 cases against the one case each in 2017.

According to information provided by the PJ director on the sidelines of the event, “in fact, the total number of cases involving sexual abuse of minors [aged below 16 years old] was 33 [last year].”

“We must bear in mind that the majority of these cases [of sexual abuse] happen with people that the victims know well. In one-third [of cases] this happens in Study Centers of Education-related institutions and others with family members or domestic helpers,” the PJ director said, calling on all parents and family members to pay more attention to the behavior of children in order to prevent these kinds of cases.

Sit also urged schools and other education institutions to seek more information on the staff they plan to recruit, performing a better evaluation at time of recruitment and asking for more information, such as their criminal record, before recruitment.

Regarding the phone scams, although the PJ reported  a 12 percent drop in this kind of cases last year, the director noted that there are several other crimes related, such as the ones happening over the internet that in total constitute a significant share of the crime.

In addition, the PJ director explained that these kinds of crimes usually result in the loss of large sums of money, and the criminal often swaps their “modus operandi” in order to target different kinds of people at different times, one of the reasons that these crimes are considered a priority for the authorities.

As Sit explained, “in the first part of the year [2018], we saw these crimes happening in the form of people pretending to be government or police authorities and targeting mostly university students in Macau, but, in the second semester we [saw] a return of the ‘guess who I am’ kind of phone scam which was [targeting] older people.”

Still, the PJ director considered that the work being done to alert the population to the prevention of such crimes is getting positive results, saying that “the drop in the number of cases was from 139 in 2017 to 128 in 2018 but, more importantly is the fact that the amount lost was far lower; almost half.”

As for the crimes related to gambling activities, as forecasted, they continued to grow in 2018 by about 6.5 percent, to a total of 5,014 cases.

DNA database to be ready this year, public consultation in mid-2019

Questioned as to the status of the amendments to the law that aims to establish in Macau a DNA database that could be used to ease police investigation works, the director of the PJ Sit Chong Meng said he expected  the law to be completed within the year. “This is a very important tool for police investigation and we want it [our law framework] to follow the international standards,” Sit told the media.

According to the PJ director, “after the draft concludes, we will do a public consultation where we will clarify all the details and concerns expressed by society. We are not elaborating [upon] the public consultation document. We hope that at mid-year we can do the public consultation.”

The establishment of a local DNA database system was already completed in 2012, but its use was postponed due to the lack of a legal framework to support its entry into force, causing concerns in areas such as personal data protection and privacy.

Another topic addressed by Sit in media questions related to the amendments of the Cybersecurity Law, whose works were also expected to be concluded this year.

On the topic, the PJ director said that “the crimes of this kind have been growing. The last year we have reports of two cases related to ‘hackers’ and although the number of cases is small, it is considerable in the way that [these crimes] can cause a strong impact on people as well as on companies,” he said, adding, “we need to legislate.”