LAHORE: The provincial capital has witnessed a significant decrease of over 50 per cent in heinous and violent crimes due to multiple strategies the police have adopted, bringing a major relief to the public.

In a press conference at Qila Gujjar Singh Police Lines on Monday, Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) Bilal Siddique Kamyana said the elimination of several organised crime networks, the arrest of hardened criminals, improved challaning ratio, and effective operational strategy had contributed significantly to reducing street crime in Lahore, a city that had been reporting a constant crime surge for many years.

He claimed the provincial capital had marked a nearly 56pc decrease in property crimes. He said the data was prepared based on the number of calls to the police helpline 15 that citizens made to report heinous and other crimes, including robbery, dacoity, vehicle snatching, and theft.

The CCPO said crime calls related to burglary had reduced by 64pc, and calls related to dacoity had reduced by 56pc. Similarly, he said the provincial capital had witnessed a significant decrease in vehicle theft by 51pc and vehicle snatching by 57pc.

The crime related to vehicle theft and snatching had posed a potential challenge for the police, he said, adding the CIA, the anti-vehicle lifting squad, and other formations of the Lahore police had played a key role in rounding up and eliminating several major networks in this respect.

“The Lahore police made frequent raids on the dens of criminals to weaken their organised networks and arrested many of them,” he said.

The police arrested 2,590 proclaimed offenders of category “A”, 10,264 of category “B”, 16,678 court absconders, and 5,679 target offenders, he said.

About the investigation wing, which played a decisive role in bringing crime down, the Lahore police chief said the police had completed the investigations of a total of 474,000 cases that were lying pending since 2018.

“It was an extensive, exhausting, and challenging job to complete the investigations of a huge number of pending cases,” he said.

This exercise helped a lot in initiating court proceedings against repeat offenders for punishment to bring crime down in Lahore.

“The Lahore police also made a recovery of Rs1.54 billion from criminals and returned it to citizens/complainants during the first five months of 2024,” he said.

He said the provincial capital police had launched massive crackdowns under the ‘drug-free Lahore’ programme to uproot an organised network of drug traffickers.

In the wake of these actions, the police lodged over 15,000 cases, arrested as many drug traffickers, and recovered 1,024kg of charas, 315kg of heroin, 144kg of ice, and 410kg of opium from January 2023 to May 31, 2024.

Similarly, the police arrested over 14,000 suspects during the same period, recovered from them a huge quantity of illegal weapons and lodged cases against them.

Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2024