CDN FILE PHOTO
CEBU CITY, Philippines – More law enforcers from the Philippine National Police (PNP) and Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) are deployed around the vicinity of the Cebu City Jail.
This developed after health officers found out that there are 127 inmates and jail personnel at the city jail infected with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Police Colonel Josefino Ligan, chief of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO), said augmentation forces have been assigned to secure the penal facility’s premises from outside.
“We have from the Guadalupe Police Station and at least two SWAT (Special Weapon and Tactics) teams in place there,” Ligan told reporters in a conference call on Thursday, April 23, 2020.
“As far as the police are concerned, there is an estimated 100 of our personnel assigned around the jail’s vicinity,” he added.
He also said police from the Provincial Mobile Force Company and armored vehicles from the Central Command of AFP are now in the area to guard.
The Cebu City Jail, which now houses over 6,000 prisoners, is situated in Barangay Kalunasan here.
It is only a stone’s throw away from the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC), the Capitol-ran penal facility that also housed over 3,000 inmates.
The Bureau of Jail Management and Penology in Central Visayas (BJMP-7) has placed all those who tested positive of COVID-19 in an isolated center within the city jail compound.
BJMP-7 has also started doing contact tracing. Cebu City Jail has been under indefinite lockdown since March.
On Wednesday, April 22, videos captured from the outside of Cebu City Jail showing inmates making loud noises from their detention cells circulated on social media.
BJMP-7 assured the situation has been placed under control, and added that the detainees were ‘surprised’ on the arrival of police officers.
Cebu City Government on April 20, 2020, executed a massive swab test at the city jail when it was confirmed that the city’s sixth COVID-19 mortality was an inmate.
As of April 22, 114 detainees and 13 jail personnel have tested positive of the virus. /bmjo