The Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM) have denied the claim by a website that has listed Kuala Lumpur as the sixth most dangerous city in the world.     

NONEA statement issued by the PDRM Facebookyesterday claimed the allegation was untrue, and urged the public not to believe the information or disseminate it.     

"The public is urged not to easily believe and spread information from the website, which is not validated, as it was not referred to the police.     

"Malaysians should also be responsible and ethical disseminators of information by ensuring any information obtained and shared out is from an official source," it said.     

The police Facebooktrumpeted its crime statistics, saying “from 2010 to 2012, PDRM successfully reduced the crime index in Kuala Lumpur by 31.8 percent”.

The website '10 Amesome', which ranked Kuala Lumpur as number six, claimed, “the state’s capital is said to be one of the most dangerous cities in the world, as the crime rate increased 70 percent in the last three years.”

“Malaysia also takes pride in its spectacular landscapes, a culture that begs to be discovered and explored and… a history of violence that made way too many victims,” the posting reads.

However, the article’s author, stated only as Deea, did not list the source for her information, or provide any examples to verify her claim.
Crime index debate
A description on the site, which produces 'Top ten' lists on a wide range of obscure topics such as 'Top ten facts about our planet', and 'Top ten most dangerous dogs in the world', stated it was created in 2009 by one ‘Paul’.

It also stated that “four prolific young authors” had joined the team in 2012, however, the link to the list of writers was directed to a ‘404' error page.

NONEEven so, ‘10 Awesome’ boasts that it has a monthly viewership of 100,000 and up to 7,700 fans on its social media platforms.

This is not the first time the issue of crime rate in the country has been the topic of debate, despite police's continuous assurance that the numbers have reduced over the years.

Early last year, then Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein (above) had revealed that overall crime index and street crime index for 2011 had dropped by 11.1 and 39.7 percent respectively, two years after the implementation of the National Key Result Areas (NKRA) to combat crime.

However, various quarters then accused police of manipulating this figure, a claim which was denied as police claimed to follow the same standard as the United States' FBI, to index crime.

NONEIn January, NGO Malaysian Crime Watch Taskforce (MyWatch), of which former inspector-general of police (IGP) Musa Hasan is patron, alleged that serious crimes like kidnapping and extortion are being classified as non-index crime in an effort to lower the crime index.

A month later, My Watch released claimed an internal police circular indicated incidences of crime in 2011 was more than double the statistics released to the public.