Patrol crime-prone areas, Cebu City police told

CEBU CITY — Regional police chief Avelino Razon Jr. has ordered all policemen in the city to get out of their respective stations and to spend more time patrolling crime-prone streets in their areas.

The order was the latest issued by Razon in response to the increasing regularity of daring daylight robberies in the Metro Cebu area.

Only those that are assigned to desk jobs are exempted from Razon’s directive.

Razon said he has observed that many policemen are just loitering around their stations, waiting for complaints instead of conducting patrols to deter crimes.

Razon issued the order during the command conference attended by all city police officials last week.

The meeting was conducted after acting Mayor Michael Rama gave the city police one month to arrest the growing number of robberies in the city.

Reporters covering the police beat also noticed that even members of the city police’s theft and robbery section were just loitering around their office at Camp Sotero Cabahug.

Theft and robbery cases in the city drastically increased in the first quarter of this year, according to police records.

Records show that from March last year to March this year, there have been 310 cases of cellular phone snatching reported to the different police stations in the city. Of these cases, only 66 cellphones were recovered.

During the same period, police arrested 75 suspected snatchers.

Among the areas with the highest incidence of snatching and robberies are M.J. Cuenco Avenue, MacArthur Boulevard, the Reclamation Area, N. Bacalso and V. Rama Avenues, Carbon market area and Sikatuna street.

The cities of Cebu and Mandaue have also been hit by a series of sensational crimes since the Holy Week break. Two broad daylight holdups of gasoline stations, less than two kilometers apart, were staged in Mandaue City in less than a week.

In Cebu City, a vehicle of the Rural Bank of Subangdaku was blocked by armed robbers who carted away P2 million right inside the driveway of the White Gold Club last week.

Two days later, a gasoline station in Banilad fell victim to a group of daytime robbers, whose modus operandi was very much the same as the Mandaue gas station robbers.

Last Friday, Razon relieved Guadalupe police chief Narciso Ouano Jr. after he found out that the latter failed to properly supervise his men and did not even know the name of the head of his station’s theft and robbery team.

Meanwhile, Mandaue City police chief Nicanor Casaclang staged a "mock robbery" the other day to test the alertness of his men.

In the "surprise dry run," policemen from four of the five Mandaue police stations were tasked to respond to two robbery alarms along A Cortes Highway. Only the Subangdaku police chief, however, was able to respond to the alarm. — Freeman News Service