Police Refute Claim That Klang Is The Most Unsafe City in Southeast Asia

By Ahmad Hamizan  •  05 Oct 2021 in News

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Ahh, Klang. The Royal Town of Selangor State. Place of bustling commerce and home to wondrous sights and sounds. And most unsafe city in South East Asia?

Local news coverage was abuzz at a purported article alleging just as much recently, seemingly confirming a widely held presumption of the area – that it is a place where criminal activities happen more than perchance.

JUICE even ran an editorial a few years ago which sought to compile the most dangerous neighbourhoods in the Klang Valley based on crime reports found online, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the piece opened with Klang.

However, the police have stepped forward to refute the assertion, and call into question the methodology of the website.

“The qualitative and quantitative methods of the survey, as well as the number of respondents also (sic) do not paint a true picture or representation of the whole community in the Klang District,” said Selangor Police chief Datuk Arjunaidi Mohamed.

Numbeo, the data aggregator in question, lists Klang’s Crime Index at a staggering 66.66%, and Safety at a paltry 33.34% as of time of writing. It appears that these numbers are derived from online respondents, who count 60 unique responses.

Arjunaidi pointed to the Selangor Police’s own data from this year, which lays plain that Klang sits on the lower threshold when it comes to crime, and that members of the public ought not to be misled by sentiment.

There is no easy explanation for Klang’s woes, but an honest conversation about crime and policing which involves all stakeholders can be a start.