Cebu News

Cebu businessmen have deplored the inefficiency of policemen amid rising robbery cases in Metro Cebu and the unsolved vigilante-style executions of petty criminals.

Mandaue Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) president Eric Ng Mendoza said efficient police action, not the killing of petty criminals in vigilante-style attacks, is the key to solving the rising cases of robbery in Metro Cebu.

"When we make a wrong to cure a wrong thing, everything is wrong," Mendoza said. He stressed vigilantism is inhuman.

Robert Go, Philippines Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) regional governor for Central Visayas, said the police should do their job to prevent crime.

"I think it is the visibility of the police and the confiscation of loose firearms," he said.

The separate statements of Go and Mendoza came in reaction to the killing of a bank manager after he was robbed while changing a flat tire along Ouano Avenue at the North Reclamation Area in Mandaue City on Tuesday night.

Narciso Damole, 38, Allied Bank branch manger in Mandaue, was the fourth fatality in the 16 robbery cases reported since September 9.

The rise in the robbery cases occured amid the deployment of more than 1,100 policemen from other regions to augment the security in time for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in December.

Mendoza said the police must be concerned about the Damole killing because it happened along the road leading to the Cebu International Convention Center, one of the venues of the meetings for the summit.

"We have to assign and detail the police authority to augment the peace and order in that area because it's dark, and isolated there," he said, noting that whenever he passed the area, he had not seen a single policeman.

Go agreed that police visibility in Metro Cebu was lacking. He added the police should seize all unlicensed guns that are usually used by criminals.

A top official of the Police Regional office in Central Visayas (PRO-7) admitted that something is wrong with the deployment of the augmentation cops for the ASEAN Summit.

Chief Supt. Silverio Alarcio Jr., PRO 7 chief, noticed the lack of supervision from the station commanders who were supposed to be the superior officers of these policemen.

"We could see that there's something wrong with the deployment and the station commanders should go to the ground to determine if the instruction is carried out," Alario said.

He agreed to the statement of Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia that these policemen were mere "decorations" in the streets and vowed to correct this.

The policemen were sent to Cebu last month under the Field Training Program (FTP) primarily to help in the security for the ASEAN Summit.

Of the 1,100, about 300 were in Cebu City, 300 in the province, and 100 in Mandaue and about 600 in Lapu-Lapu City. (PNA)

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