PRO-7 personnel on high alert for “ber” months

CEBU, Philippines —  The authorities will heighten their intelligence monitoring this ‘ber’ months, following a report of a recent robbery “modus operandi,” said Police Regional Office (PRO)-7 Chief Albert Ignatius Ferro.

“Actually with that kind of information, it’s alarming.  But we will help PDEA in checking this particular information and will bring to justice those who were involved and we will intensify our anti-criminalities considering that this month is the start of the ber month,” Ferro told reporters in an interview yesterday.

The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA)-7 has earlier released an advisory asking the public to be vigilant in spotting modus operandi of robbers who will claim to be PDEA agents.

Ferro said they will be instituting a “target hardening” and will be monitoring places of convergence and vital installations. Aside from these, the police patrol will also be done regularly.

“Actually the numbers of robbery (cases), thief are not that high yet because of the extensive QCPs (quarantine control points), extensive checkpoints.  But we will check and try to determine the level of alarm on robbery and thief cases here in Sugbo.  But in our records, we are still doing good, based on our statistics,” he said.

For the last three levels of quarantine periods, the eight focus crimes are still going down at 58 percent in comparison to the daily average crimes during the pre-quarantine period that could record up to 29 crimes a day.

As of yesterday, only 13 crimes have been recorded all throughout the region in a day.

For thief cases, there was a 71 percent drop in the whole region.  For physical injuries, there was a 37 percent decrease; 11 percent decrease in murder, while a 78.4 percent decrease for robbery cases. The homicide cases, however, went up by 2.3 percent.

“Again, there’s nothing to cause for alarm but we always say that we won’t lower our guards.  We always direct our people, the different police stations, especially Cebu City, to be vigilant, to see to it that the crime volume here is on downtrend, because the checkpoints our patrols are intensive. So, it should be a different story, if we relax,” said Ferro.

As to the slay of J-Centre Mall robbery suspect Julivyn  Lumingkit Terante, who was shot dead shortly after he was released from the Mandaue City Jail, Ferro said they do not discount the possibility that the suspects behind the murder was a member of their robbery gang.

“Because there are issues that there are some people who got the money during the robbery and they did not remit it to their group. Maybe that’s one of the motives that we are looking into, parang nagka onsehan ba,” said Ferro.

He added they will also be intensifying their monitoring to see if the other robbery gang members are still here in Central Visayas.

He also said they will be also monitoring banks, money remittance centers and other establishments that might be a target for any robbery attempts.

“Actually I do believe that our different city directors diri sa highly urbanized (areas) are constantly communicating with the security officers of the different establishments so that they will have a unified approach in preventing any untoward robberies,” said Ferro. — GAN (FREEMAN)