Cebu provincial policemen deployed to secure CPDRC

An inmate talks to a visitor at the visitation area of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center. The jail management has suspended jail visits since Thursday.
CDN PHOTO/JUNJIE MENDOZA

Twenty police officers from the Provincial Public Safety Company (PPSC) of the Cebu Provincial Police Office (CPPO) will be deployed to the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) on Monday to augment security in the facility.

Bobby Legaspi, officer-in-charge of the CPDRC, said he made the request to Senior Supt. Eric Noble, CPPO chief, last Thursday after the greyhound operation conducted earlier yielded several contraband like cell phones.

He said that the visits were suspended to prevent anything from coming in pending the additional security assistance that the police would provide.

However, the jail visits for inmates remain suspended despite the deployment of the police officers.

Legaspi said that the suspension would stay until further notice.

The PPSC personnel will be stationed at the perimeter of the facility and will have to be accompanied by a CPDRC jail guard if they have to come inside the CPDRC building, Legaspi said.

Legaspi also said that when the jail visits would be restored, he planned to go back to the old system — Monday to Friday visits but an inmate would only be allowed 30 minutes at the visitation area.

“We’re going back to the old. When we say the old one, when I was here before, Monday to Friday. It worked before so why fix it if it wasn’t broken?” he said.

He said he would go back to the number system where inmates would be divided and classified into room numbers, a system where the jail management could control things coming in and out on a daily basis.

With the old system back in place, the visitation schedules of the inmates would be on a per cluster basis, where those belonging to certain cell numbers would be allowed to accept visitors on a certain day.

Legaspi said that a three-tier security check would also be observed in CPDRC, which would include an initial checkpoint at the main entrance before having to pass through their K9 units, and finally proceeding to the final checkpoint inside the CPDRC.