Police to conduct ‘profiling’ of local candidates
THE Police Regional Office in Central Visayas (PRO-7) will begin to conduct its profiling of local candidates for next year’s elections as soon as the period of filing Certificates of Candidacy (COCs) ends today, October 17.
“We received guidance from the Director for Operation in Camp Crame to start already our own assessment,” said Chief Supt. Debold Sinas, PRO-7 regional director.
According to Sinas, among other things, they will check whether or not the politicians seeking elective positions in the region have private armed groups and if a town or a city has intense political rivalry.
“We will also identify those leaders before that reportedly have private armies. We will assess them if this will affect (the midterm elections),” said Sinas.
Aside from this, the police will also check the candidates’ possible links to drug syndicates, communist rebels, and other organized crime groups, said Sinas.
“From there, we will trace back our old records (about these politicians) and compare it to the reports that we will have,” he said.
Sinas vowed to crack down on private armies operating in the region if reports on their presence are validated by the police.
“We will still re-evaluate if there is really private armed groups since there is a new definition of private armed group given by the headquarters. We will just compare it,” said Sinas, refusing to elaborate on their “new definition”.
Nationwide, the Philippine National Police (PNP) is now after at least 77 active private armed groups with purportedly 2,060 members.
Last Sunday, PNP spokesperson Chief Supt. Benigno Durana Jr., said most of the private armies are located in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
He said that these private armed groups know that the police are hunting them down.
Durana said police continued to verify the number of private armed groups for updating, but 100 to 200 “potential” private armies are already being watched.
The groups have been “inactive for a while” and could just be waiting to surface once “market season” begins, Durana said.
Meanwhile, an initial list of hot spots or areas of concern drawn up by Camp Crame showed nearly 8,000 villages across the country.
For Central Visayas, Sinas said, there are areas being closely watched by PNP for possible intense political rivalry.
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