⌛ Safety in Dumaguete

since a few weeks i am gathering information on Dumaguete. it all sounds nice BUT..... within the 1 month i follow this forum i read that first the Reverend (as you call him) was shot over a traffic problem and then Dakota (as he is called there) was robbed and stabbed.
i live in Indonesia for over 20 years and i have been in the worst places where i always felt safe as there is a known rule here by robbers which is : when you rob an expat the police will really search for the one(s) who did it.
moreover here no one carries a gun or a knive
so i am beginning to wonder whether the 2 incidents are coincidence or is it a trend ?

 

I am interested in the response of people who live in Dumaguete. I live in Manila and what I find is that crime goes unpunished unless the victim is a prominent politician or wealthy.

My follow up question to the one posed by Kees Valk is: Do criminals get pursued and caught in Dumaguete?

 

Please don't give Dumaguete a bad rap. Crime is all over the world. If you use common sense, sometimes you can avoid trouble. I don't know the guy that got stabbed and I hope he gets well soon, But remember that he had a choice to fight or give up his stuff. I feel that anyone should have the right to walk on the street day or night without getting messed with. As for the Reverend, I hope he gets his day in court and gets paid. Bad things happen to good people and it's the way of life. Most filipino robbers come in pairs and their main goal is to get money not hurt people, but if you fight they will hurt or kill you. Money and a passport can be replaced, your life can't. I guess you have to weigh out the value of your life and what you have in your pockets. It shouldn't be a hard decision.

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Let's not miss the importance of pursuing criminals. There is crime everywhere in the world. But the majority of crimes are committed by a few individuals. US cities went through a radical reduction in crime in the 1980s when they started identifying and pursuing repeat criminals.

A friend's house in Quezon City was broken into at gun point when he was away from home. The two characters had their faces covered and bound and blindfolded the maid, raped her and went off with a few valuables. When the police came they said: "there is nothing we can do. No one saw them so we cannot pursue them. We have no equipment or database to control for fingerprints so there is no point in taking fingerprints".

Those two characters are surely going around breaking into other houses and raping other women.

Police work can be effective. But someone has to worry about effective police work and police have to be paid and trained reasonably. In some places it is called "good governance".

Is the situation in Dumaguete better than in Quezon City - Manila?

 

Steve, I do agree that it's cleaver to not risk your life.
About your words:
"I don't know the guy that got stabbed and I hope he gets well soon, But remember that he had a choice to fight or give up his stuff"
I do not know if they HAD a real choice but even if they had, I'm glad there are people (not me !) who have the guts to not let these robbers unharmed.
I am pretty sure (can't prove it) that thanks to those people who don't accept to be robbed, we have less roberries.
It works preventive although it also will lead to more use of arms.
I don't know what I should do but it's good some at least take action.
We all know that we don't have to rely on others for action (after having been robber).
Only my thought.

 

You said it "Police work 'can' be effective"

Do you have any reason to believe it would be better? Quezon would have more money and resources then a province town. Even with the help of the PNP patrols it is really just a frontier out here. It comes down to knowing your neighbors so you can be aware of the strangers looking for easy targets. Effective Police work is still a goal of the government and one I would say will remain elusive for quite some time.

 

Remember how this conversation got started. With Kees Valk saying:

"i live in Indonesia for over 20 years and i have been in the worst places where i always felt safe as there is a known rule here by robbers which is : when you rob an expat the police will really search for the one(s) who did it."

I thought a small place like Dumaguete might have a more responsive local government and police department than Manila

 

Only if they're really stupid, unlucky, poor or white...............

 

Unfortunately, the police in the Philippines don't really do anything unless they can make money by doing it or a powerful person is pressuring for them action. The victims of crime need to pay an investigator (who may themselves be police), then pay an attorney to file the case. If they don't or can't do this, nothing is ever done in the vast majority of cases.

In the Philippines, the vast majority of 'stand-bys' have knives...and their are plenty of guns.

This is a definite trend. On the 13th, the former Miss Dumaguete was murdered by an unmasked hitman in the middle of the city park before multiple witnesses. Two nights ago, we had 2 more murders in my barangay (Mangnao). This brings my count to 8 murders in my one barangay in the past year or so. By the way, there are 30 Barangays in Dumaguete City.

To those apologists who say that 'crime happens all over the world', I would like to ask, how many places in the world have you lived?! Things have gotten bad here, virtually none of the crimes are ever solved or prosecuted. It is not like this all over the world...

 

Lived (& worked) in the following countries:- UK, Norway, France, Syria, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, Yemen, Pakistan, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Japan, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, Ecuador, Venezuela and the US of A.
Oh and yes, there is crime everywhere, even in muslim countries. As world population grows, (especially this country, when I arrived the population was around 60-62 million, now it's around 90+ million), resources and opportunities are going to be even more stretched. Of course there's going to be more crime as poverty/greed/drug use increase and there are more people around to commit it.
Police, whose budgets are largely controlled by thieving, dirtbag politicians are also going to be harder pressed too. (Ok, I will admit that police here, do a lot of thieving too though.)
That's planet earth now, no use whinging about it or hiding one's head in the sand.