PAOCC ordered to stop kidnaps

President Arroyo has ordered the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) to go after kidnappers and drug traffickers.

PAOCC intelligence chief Billy Beltran said yesterday Mrs. Arroyo instructed him to coordinate with the National Anti-Crime Council and the National Anti-Kidnapping Task Force.

"We will be helping the task forces in solving kidnapping for ransom as well as the narcotics problem," he said. "It was a verbal instruction given by the President through our immediate superior, Senior Superintendent Raul Castañeda. We will be the ones providing intelligence to the other agencies. There will be pooling of resources."

Beltran said Mrs. Arroyo issued the order days before she allowed civilians, specifically Filipino-Chinese, to carry firearms as a defense against kidnappers and other criminals.

But Presidential Spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao said Mrs. Arroyo has not yet acted on the request of the Filipino-Chinese community to authorize them to pack guns to protect themselves.

"That was proposed," he said. "But the President has not acted on it. That has been raised during the Cabinet meeting. But the President is still evaluating it."

Tiglao said it was also proposed that the intelligence-gathering capability of law-enforcement agencies engaged in the fight against kidnapping be strengthened.

"In other proposals, for instance, the problem is how to strengthen their intelligence capacity because kidnapping is not a crime done by ordinary criminals," he said.

"Most probably, these are done by hardened criminals with sufficient arms and expertise, which means what police should have and would have to do is to really improve their intelligence capability."

The latest kidnap victim is 14-year-old high school sophomore Angela Pineda, daughter of well-known dermatologist Dr. Vinzons Pineda, the inventor of the Minoxidil hair grower.

Angela was snatched at gunpoint in Mandaluyong City in the morning of Nov. 12 as she was being driven in the family van to her school in nearby San Juan.

The kidnapping of Angela took place after Tiglao had announced to reporters that statistics from the Philippine National Police showed that the crime rate in the country had gone down this year.

Tiglao said the number of reported crimes nationwide was expected to drop to 76,927 this year from 80, 000 last year.

Official figures showed 57,693 crimes were reported to the police between January and September this year, he added.

Filipino-Chinese businessmen vowed to set up a "government-approved vigilante group" to help police fight kidnapping and other crimes after 20 armed men robbed a company owned by taipan Lucio Tan of P4 million in payroll.

Benjamin Chua, spokesmn for the Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry, said they are "formalizing and conceptualizing" the criteria for recommending a civilian to be deputized as a crime fighter.

The Filipino-Chinese community is working closely with the Manila police in naming members of the vigilante group, he added.