My Bario Continues to Grow But was Surprisingly Crimeless

There were a lot of factors that people consider when choosing a place to live and among of those things, low crime rate was one of those considerations that everyone would agree in order to protect the safety of their personal property and their lives. As for my family, we were living on a small Bario or Barangay for more than 20 years now which have undergone a lot of change over the past years, including a big increase on the population. Despite that, the amount of crime that happens in the area was surprisingly low.

Our Bario from the Past to Present

They say that one of the factors for the increase of crime rate is the increase of population that's that is why I believe I should provide the context that would explain the current situation of the place that I live compared from the time that we first relocate. For those who don't know, a Barangay was what we refer for the smallest administrative division in the Philippines and when we first relocate to the Barangay that we currently live, the population was no more than 5,000 people but fast forward to the present, the population has reached 40,000. This was due to multiple housing projects that was built in our barangay and has brought people from different parts of the country. The first was in 2010 where they relocate the people living near railways followed by a project in 2015 giving house to the families of military and police officials and finally by 2016 transferring people living in squatter areas on different cities.

With many people from different places relocated in one place, one would expect it to be a recipe for disaster. After all, they used to live on different environments and has their own different values and for a while, there were lots of conflicts and misunderstanding between people but as time passes by, they were able to settle their differences and accept one another. That said, there were some cases of theft which victimizes some of the original residence and this was mainly due to the relocated people losing their jobs which many were able to be caught by the authority. Another crime that was more prevalent were vehicular accidents mostly due to drunk driving but this were crimes that usually settled outside the court as long as no lives were lost. This crimes still do happen from time to time but most of the time, our life was peaceful.

2023 Crime Rate in Our Bario

We are almost 8 months now since the start of 2023 so I have tried to to ask the clerk in the Barangay Building if I could get a statistics for the crime rate this from the past years to get to get the exact numbers but sadly, they would not give the record and said that it should be requested on the Federal Bureau which would take time but according to her, so far, there were only 2 cases of theft and 1 drug cases this year. By using this Crime Rate Calculator, there is 7.5 crime rate per 100 k people or 0.000075 chance to be a victim of a crime which is really low though, the year was not yet done so it could still rise.

The Night Life that was almost Asleep

Despite our growing population, nights were surprisingly silent but this was not of the fear of going outside due to the fear of crime but more on the rural vibes that we original residents used to have that is being assimilated by the relocated people. We sleep early at night and wakes up before the sun rises so even if its just 10:00 P.M, you can only see very few people outside and almost no vehicle uses the road. Even so, the roads were well lit with lights and there were lots of CCTV's that was installed in places which would prevent people for commiting a crime. There were also barangay patrols that were roaming every time so people can still feel safe during the night even when they were out. If I should say, the only threat to people at night were probably stray and unleashed dogs that would barks at anyone that is nearby their owners home.