CCPO chief taking steps to prevent thefts, robberies in Cebu City

Police Colonel Josefino Ligan, chief of Cebu City Police Office

CEBU CITY, Philippines — With the Christmas season here, Cebu City police are taking steps to prevent crimes against property like thefts and robberies.

Police Colonel Josefino Ligan, Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) chief, said that he had ordered the 11 police station chiefs of Cebu City to strengthen their community engagements and coordinate with establishment owners and security personnel to prevent these kinds of crimes.

Ligan said although he had not yet received reports of outsiders, who would come to the city during the Christmas season to rob and steal, police would still be ready to prevent these crimes.

He was referring to members of gangs, who would usually transfer to Cebu City during the holidays and victimize residents here either by stealing from them or robbing them.

Ligan said that they would intensify their intelligence gathering and strengthen their community engagements like conducting lectures on security and crimes with different sectors of the community as proactive ways to prevent these crimes.

He also said based on their monitoring, theft and robbery incidents in the city were still minimal.

But the CCPO chief said that they were still anticipating these from happening because some people would still take advantage of the current situation, especially with the eased restrictions.

For the past weeks, the CCPO has recorded fewer than 14 crime incidents in the city, which is within the set target of14 crime incidents a week for the Cebu City police.

This was the target number of crime incidents in the city that the CCPO should maintain weekly as ordered by Police Brigadier General Roque Eduardo Vega, Police Regional Office in Central Visayas (PRO-7) director, for the CCPO.

Roque earlier told Ligan that the CCPO should maintain only 14 crime incidents or lower than that weekly in the city.

Ligan said that they only had 13 crime incidents last week and the week before that they recorded only eight crime incidents in the city.

From September 29 to November 28, 2021, the PRO-7 has recorded a significant drop in crime incidents in Central Visayas as compared to the same period in 2020. 

They have reported a 16.41 percent drop in the crime rate in two months or around 1,283 incidents as compared to 1,535 crime incidents in the same period last year.

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