Buenafe asks PRO-7: Address Cebu City's lack of policemen

CEBU, Philippines - Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) Director Melvin Ramon Buenafe is challenging the Police Regional Office (PRO) 7 to address their problem on the lack of personnel.

Buenafe said they are doing their part in the CCPO to prevent crimes from happening in the city, so their mother headquarters should also do their part.

“They have seen that we are trying to do something here. I want others to also do their part like hear us that we really need additional personnel here,” said Buenafe during the recent launching of Police Community Relations Month of the CCPO.

Buenafe was referring to their activity last Friday wherein they threw a party for almost 1,000 streets kids by giving them food, playing with them and having the street children watch cartoons in the whole afternoon.

Buenafe had announced they will continue to feed at least 100 kids from that day on through their Piso sa Pulis alang sa Libud Suroy program, with the purpose of taking the kids away from snatching or sniffing rugby.

He said the police organization is the one directly affected by the problem of street children who have been reported taken to police stations several times for snatching, but are not held liable because of the existing Juvenile Law.

He said they need more personnel to be deployed in the streets.

“Kanus-a pa man sila mag-deploy ug personnel, kung naa na’y dagkong robbery incidents na mahitabo?,” he said, referring to the Regional Mobile Patrol Group. This patrol group is PRO 7’s standby force, whom Buenafe said has had zero encounters as of the moment.

The CCPO director said they already requested for additional personnel but they have been told by PRO-7 that this has since been the problem of their organization - the lack of manpower.

Ten years ago, Buenafe added, there were amore than 1,000 policemen under the CCPO unlike in the succeeding years until today that there are only 800 of them, as against the city’s booming population.

In a separate interview, Senior Supt. Ernie Taleon, chief of PRO-7 Regional Personnel and Human Resource Development Doctrine, said they will already be deploying RMG personnel on July 11.

Taleon said the PRO-7 currently has over 1,000 RMG personnel, including the almost 500 undergoing Scout Training. Half of them are the ones to be deployed, he said.

Taleon said they will divide the RMG personnel and add them up to the respective Public Safety Company (PSC) of the seven police offices under PRO-7, especially in Bohol, Lapu-Lapu City, and Siquijor which have fewer standby forces.

The police official said the CCPO, which has about over 100 PSC personnel, and other police offices, can utilize under their Operations Branch half of the PSC once some of the RMG troops are already added.

Taleon said there is indeed a lack of manpower in their organization which has been their problem.

He said they are aiming for a ratio of one policeman for every 500 civilians. However, the current ratio is still one policeman for every 900 civilians or even 1 cop for 1,000 people in some police offices. – THE FREEMAN