The Lapu-Lapu City government is drafting an ordinance that will require all subdivisions in the city to install closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and hire security guards.
Around 120 homeowners association in Lapu-Lapu City met with the police and Mayor Paz Radaza yesterday to discuss security in subdivisions and other concerns.
Radaza said it was time for subdivisions to install CCTV cameras as a deterrent to crimes and to help identify perpetrators if crimes are committed.
She said Gun-ob Barangay Captain Jose Dungog, ABC president and an ex-officio member of the council, is drafting an ordinance requiring each subdivision to install CCTV cameras and a security agency to protect the area.
The measure is scheduled for deliberation soon and a public hearing will follow.
“We are very much alarmed knowing that there are subdivisions, despite the deployment of security guards, that are still vulnerable to crimes,” said the mayor.
She cited the much publicized Sept. 15 robbery in a residence in Corinthian Subdivision where 17-year-old Karen Kaye Montebon,a college freshman, was strangled in her bedroom.
A week after, police identified the perpetrator as Ruben Fernandez, a shabu-user with a jail record for theft and robbery.
He was let into the house by Karen since he accompanied his live-inpartner, a close friend of Karen’s mother.
Police found lapses on the part of the security guards and lack of preventive measures in the subdivision.
A CCTV camera in one of the houses and another outside the subdivision provided footage that helped police identify Fernandez how rode a motorbike into the neighbor.
Fernandez first drove in with his girlfriend in the morning, then return alone shortly after.
Senior Supt. Armando Radoc, head of the Lapu-Lapu City Police Office, urged homeowners to be extra careful.
“We should not give robbers the opportunity, to s trike” Radoc said.
Jonathan Comiso, president of the homeowner’s association of Genesis Subdivision in barangay Basak asked Radoc during the open forum for police men to patrol inside the subdivisions.
Radoc said that while he would like to do that, t due to limited personnel and resources, they can’t cover m ore than a hundred subdivisions in Lapu-Lapu city.
“You should hire the services of a protective agency and install CCTV cameras,” Radoc said.
Homeonwers were also reminded to segregate their trash.Concerns on flooding and the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB) were also taken up.