T

his year, Jakartans have been eyewitness to thousands of criminal cases, which, based on the Jakarta Police year-end report, have happened to 213 out of every 100,000 citizens.

Some of the city'€™s top crime stories that came under the spotlight this year include the brutal murder of Ade Sara Angelina Suroto, who was killed by her ex-boyfriend Ahmad Imam Al Hafid, 19, and his girlfriend Assyifa Ramadhani, 18, in March.

In December, a panel of judges at the Central Jakarta district court sentenced both Hafid and Assyifa to 20 years imprisonment for committing the premeditated murder.

During the trial, the judges were shown that the crime started when the couple picked Ade Sara up on her way to her extracurricular class before they kidnapped her, inflicted her with electric shocks and beat her to death. Afterwards, they dumped Ade Sara'€™s body by the Bintara toll road in Bekasi, West Java.

A number of children also suffered from violence this year. One of the high profile cases was about sexual abuse committed against three kindergarten students at the Jakarta Intercultural School (JIS).

The South Jakarta District Court declared on Dec. 22 that five PT ISS Indonesia cleaners were guilty in the JIS case and sentenced four of them to eight years'€™ imprisonment and the fifth, a woman, to eight years, despite defense lawyers'€™ insistence there was a lack of evidence in the three-page indictment.

The year 2014 was also marred by crimes that occurred on public transportation. City-owned PT Transjakarta was under heavy criticism after a sexual assault case implicating some of its staff was made public.

In January, a woman filed a police report against four Transjakarta employees for a sexual assault that was committed when she fell unconscious in the generator room of the Harmoni bus shelter in Central Jakarta.

The four men, who have been dismissed from Transjakarta, were sentenced to 18 months of jail time after they were found guilty on July 8.

Earlier this month, a series of robberies occurred in white taxis allegedly using the logo of the Express Group, one of the most popular taxi operators in the city. The perpetrators had been hiding in the vehicle trunks and entered the front compartments through the back seat while pointing a sharp weapon at the women passengers.

A few days later police arrested three men, including a driver of a reputable taxi company.

Despite the concerning crimes, Jakarta Police have claimed that 2014 was a safer period for Jakartans compared to the previous year as the city only saw 48,503 crimes compared to the 51,444 that were reported last year. Jakarta Police chief Ins. Gen. Unggung Cahyono said the police had made all necessary efforts to suppress the crime rate in Jakarta.

'€œThere are fewer criminal cases because Jakarta Police have made preventive and repressive measures to minimize them,'€ Unggung told reporters at the Jakarta Police headquarters on Monday.

Contacted separately, National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan) chairwoman Yuniyanti Chuzaifah said that the police should not merely rely on statistics to claim a lower crime rate in the city.

'€œNot every criminal case can be measure with numbers. In crimes toward women there are a lot of unreported cases because of the victims'€™ reluctance to file police reports,'€ she told the Post.

Yuniyanti said that police and other law enforcement agencies should be more sensitive in handling violations against women in the future to encourage women to file reports if they become victims of crime.