YEREVAN, MARCH 19, NOYAN TAPAN. 659 crimes have been registered in 2007 January-February in Yerevan, which is more by 73 cases or 12.5% as compared with the same index of the previous year. Reporting this at the March 19 meeting with journalists, Police Major-General Nerses Nalbandian, Head of Yerevan Police Department, explained that the growth of the number of crimes is conditioned by "consistent policy of disclosing latent crimes and more complete registration of committed crimes." Six aforethought murders have been committed in the first two months in Yerevan against five murders committed in the same period of the previous year. Four out of the crimes have been already disclosed. 15 criminal groups with 42 persons have been rendered harmless. 63 cases of crimes committed by them have been already disclosed. Cases of hooliganism have decreased by 41% and cases of robbery by 33%. As a positive tendency N. Nazarian also mentioned the fact that the number of crimes committed with fire-arms has decreased by 40%. 18 units of fire-arms illegally kept by people have been confiscated by Police, including 2 sub-machine-guns, 9 pistols, 3 grenades and over 300 bullets of various calibres. In N. Nazarian's words, the growth of indices in fighting narcotism by 24 or 80% is the continuation of the improvement that started last year. Cases of revealing drug sellers have grown almost twice. 700 g various types of drugs have been confiscated in the first two months of 2007. The growth of cases of apartment thefts is alarming: they have grown by 24 cases or by 52%. Thefts committed by penetrating into an apartment through the window prevail among them - 34, the number of thefts committed by breaking the lock is 16, thefts through an adjusted key 12, thefts by entering an apartment from through open doors 8. A growth of tendency of car hijacking has been registered in the first two months of current year. 28 cases of car hijacking have been registered, 9 out of them have not been disclosed yet, 19 cars were robbed. In 23 cases hijacking was committed in yards of houses, 5 from streets. 22 out of them were committed at night. Disclosure of registered cases has grown this year and made 83.9% as compared with 83.1% in the same period of the previous year. Disclosure of grave cases made 71.7% as compared with 71.4% in the same period of the previous year, disclosure of especially grave cases made 60%.

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