Songkran vacation home watch ‘a big success’
As part of police operations for “Safe Songkran Festival 2018”, 8,348 houses nationwide had joined the vacation home-watch scheme for the period April 11-17 and none of those houses had any instances of theft, national police deputy chief Pol General Chalermkiat Srivorakan told a press conference in Bangkok on Wednesday.
So far owners of 6,598 houses had returned from vacation and taken back charge of their houses from the police. He said the number of participating houses this Songkran was a 40.8 per cent increase, or 2,421 houses more than those that participated in the scheme last Songkran.
Chalermkiat also reported that the 191 Patrol and Special Operation Division had received 6,489 emergency calls in Bangkok during April 11-17 – a majority (5,196 calls) of them were complaints or crime report. The number of calls made in the other 76 provinces were being gathered as of press time, he added.
The police smartphone application “Police I lert U” was downloaded 29,576 times during April 4-15, bringing the total app download to 354,566 times, he said although only 134 users actually alerted police of emergency/crimes using the app.
During April 11-17, a total of 213 crimes to life or bodily injury took place and suspects were apprehended in 125 cases. Of these crimes, 100 cases were about physical assault and 72 suspects were apprehended for 47 such physical assault cases, while there were nine murder cases. In all these cases police had already arrested the suspects, he added. A total of 422 crimes targeting assets took place – in 227 cases police nabbed the suspects.