Manila police forms task force to secure cemeteries

The Manila Police District (MPD) has formed and activated a task force that will provide security in the city’s four cemeteries as the nation gets ready to mark All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day next week.

The task force, dubbed "Task Force Kaluluwa," has at least 800 police officers, who will be backed up by hundreds of volunteers from civic organizations.

Aside from ensuring law and order, they will also man the roads in and around the North, South, La Loma and Chinese cemeteries to help ease the yearly traffic jams and control the influx of visitors.

MPD acting director Senior Superintendent Danilo Abarzosa toured the four cemeteries yesterday to personally assess the situation if there is a need to deploy additional policemen.

"So far our preparations are going smoothly. We shall remain on red alert for any kind of threat to give visitors to the cemeteries ample protection and security," Abarzosa told The STAR.

He added that the MPD will set up three advance command posts and nine public assistance centers in the four cemeteries that will provide public assistance and receive complaints.

The advance command posts and the public assistance centers will also be manned by medical and fire personnel, explosives and ordnance personnel with bomb-sniffing dogs, Special Weapons and Tactics teams, mobile car personnel, radio communications groups, the City Hall’s Matapat personnel and barangay tanods.

The MPD’s K-9 team will start searching the four cemeteries tomorrow for any hidden explosives, Abarzosa said.

On All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day police officers will patrol inside and around the cemeteries.

All vehicles will be barred from entering the four cemeteries on All Saints’ and All Souls’ days.

Knives, paints, liquor, guitars and radios will also be prohibited inside the cemeteries. Abarzosa said they have to be checked at the gates and their owners will be given receipts that will be used for claiming them when they leave.

For crowd control, the police will put up steel barriers at the gates where visitors will undergo security checks for weapons and banned items.

"There will also be a regulated selling inside the cemeteries where only vendors with permits from the Manila City Hall shall be allowed to ply their trade," Abarzosa said.