Violent crimes in the country have been increasing steadily since 2005, long before the Emergency Ordinance (EO) was abolished, DAP said today.

NONE DAP's Kulai MP Teo Nie Ching ( right ) pointed out that violent crimes have increased by more than 5 percent annually since 2005, contradictory to Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Khalid Abu Bakar's statement yesterday that violent crimes have increased by 5 percent since the EO was abolished in 2011.

"From 2005 to 2009, the violent crimes have increased by more than 5 percent every year, even though preventive laws were not abolished yet. So how can Khalid now blame its abolishment for causing the increase in violent crimes?" Teo asked.

She was referring to a Parliamentary written answer in June 2010 given to her DAP colleague Tony Pua, which showed that an increase from 22,039 violent crime cases in 2005 to 40,738 cases in 2009, with a quantum of between 7.6 percent to 42.5 percent in between the four years.

Teo also pointed out that since the EO was abolished, the police actually managed to reduce the number of robbery cases in the country.

NONE "Even though unarmed gang robbery has increased by 4.1 percent in the year 2012, after the abolishment of preventive laws, armed gang robbery, armed robbery and unarmed robbery have decreased tremendously by 65.4 percent, 67.3 percent and 15.4 percent.

"If police were able to reduce robbery cases without the EO in the year 2012, before Khalid became IGP, why do we need to restore preventive laws to strengthen police’s powers?" she said.

She quipped that given the statistics, the police might not be lacking preventive laws but instead a more capable IGP, thus suggesting that Khalid might need to be replaced as the nation’s top cop.