CHIEF Supt. Danilo Constantino will today relinquish command of the police forces in Central Visayas and will assume a higher position in the national police headquarters in Camp Crame.
Constantino, whose wife was recently victimized by petty thieves in Lapu-Lapu City, was the region’s top cop for nine months. He will be reunited in Camp Crame with the man he replaced, then Chief Supt. Marcelo Garbo.
Constantino will assume command of the Directorate for Police-Community Relations.
Chief Supt Prudencio Tom Bañas, who heads the Human Rights Affairs Office in Camp Crame, will replace Constantino at PRO-7.
Bañas’ most recent accomplishment was facilitating the surrender of model Deniece Cornejo, one of the accused in the detention and mauling of TV personality Vhong Navarro.
PNP Director-General Alan Purisima will preside over the turnover of command.
Bañas, a member of the Philippine Military Academy Class 1983, was a former operations officer of the defunct Negros Island Police Task Force which supervised the internal security operations of the police forces in Negros Occidental from 1996 to 1998.
Constantino said his transfer is an offshoot of the retirement of a number of high-ranking officers in the PNP, which included Chief Supt. Louie Oppus who held various positions at PRO-7 before he was promoted and transferred to Camp Crame to head the Firearms and Explosives Office.
Constantino admitted that his nine-month stint in Central Visayas was quite challenging.
It was during his stint when two ships collided in the waters off Talisay City and when the Visayas was hit by an earthquake and supertyphoon Yolanda.