Impacts of Covid-19 Pandemic to the Crime Rate in Lucena City

The study aimed to identify the impacts of Covid-19 pandemic to the crime rate in Lucena City. It focused on understanding the difference between the crimes that manifested before the pandemic and the ones that occurred during the covid-19 outburst. It also determined the percentages of crime rate before and during the said pandemic. The study used documentary research method to identify the crimes and the rates between the two periods. Quantitative research method was used to help out understand the impacts of Covid-19 pandemic to the crime rates. The study used Lucena City as its locale, the city being a highly-urbanized city is an ideal locale for the study. The Police Officers of Lucena City Police District (LCPD) were the respondents of the study. The result showed that during the month of April, it is visibly shown that a matter of two (2) crimes were only lessen during that time of pandemic. The other months such as September, October, November and December have lesser crimes in 2020 than in 2019. The other months like January, February, March, May, June, July and August increased in crime rate from 2019 to 2020. Based on the table, 7 months in the year 2019 have increased in crime rate come 2020. Overall, there is an increase in crime rate from 2019 to the year 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic occurred. Majority of the respondents strongly agreed that Covid-19 pandemic added stress to the people with a weighted arithmetic mean (WAM) of 4.93. It was then followed by the statement: “The Covid-19 pandemic made use of problems to stir up crimes in Lucena City.” With a WAM of 4.83. The third statement with the highest WAM is: “The Covid-19 pandemic provided frustrations to people.” with 4.52. With all the results, the researchers created a proposed activity on the prevention of crimes in the community.