Heads will roll among Cebu City’s police station commanders if the series of robberies in the city will not be stopped.
“There was a covenant and signing was done. There are things that will happen if things are being lightly taken. It can include suspension of incentives and taking out the personnel within the station,” Mayor Michael Rama told reporters yesterday.
Rama held a meeting with Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) Director Noli Romana and the different station commanders in the city last Wednesday afternoon after another convenience store, located just a block away from the CCPO headquarters, was robbed. It was the fourth robbery in the city in just two weeks.
The mayor said he instructed Romana to discuss with regional police officials about the possibility of removing all police personnel of a police station where several robbery incidents have occurred within its jurisdiction.
Rama said he doesn’t want a mere reshuffling of personnel as he wanted to have the erring policemen yanked out of the police station and get transferred to PRO-7 headquarters or undergo retraining.
“I don’t want to see incompetence right within the City of Cebu. Why reshuffle an incompetent personnel with another one? Then, they will only be reshuffling incompetence,” he added.
Meanwhile, Cebu City Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella said during the first Cebu City Crime Prevention Summit yesterday that the police are looking into the possibility of propaganda and sabotage on the series of robberies in the city.
“It’s somewhat surprising since professional robbers will go for big chunks. But now, ginagmay lang. You can’t help people from speculating that aside from the intention of getting the amount, there is a possibility, there is more of a propaganda to embarrass the police, particularly the chief and eventually the local government unit,” said Labella who heads the city’s Police Coordinating and Advisory Council (PCAC).
He pushed for the police to have a better and more efficient intelligence networking.
Labella added this is why the city is also pushing for a bigger intelligence fund in the city’s annual budget.
During their meeting last Tuesday, the PCAC has passed a resolution asking the City Council to allocate bigger intelligence funds as provided by law.
“The PCAC wants to ask the City Council, especially that we are in the budgeting process, to observe the directive of DILG insofar as the provision on intelligence fund is concerned,” Labella said earlier this week.
He was referring to Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) Memorandum Circular No. 99-65 which states that intelligence or confidential funds can be sourced from the appropriations for the peace and order program or from the total annual appropriations.
The memorandum circular states that intelligence funds can be based on three percent of the annual appropriations or 30 percent of the allocation for the peace and order program, whichever is lower.
Labella said he will also “help convince” the council in following the DILG memorandum circular.
In the P18.9 billion proposed annual budget for 2015, the executive department asked for a P25 million allocation for intelligence funds under the P628.8 million proposed budget for the city’s peace and order program.
The proposed amount is much lesser than three percent of the annual budget which is P567 million or 30 percent of the peace and order program budget which is P188.64 million.
In 2013 and this year, the city council only approved P500,000 as intelligence funds for the city.
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