Police launch crackdown vs. motorcycle thieves in Kidapawan, NCotabato

COTABATO CITY – The police launched Wednesday a crackdown on criminal gangs following an alarming rise in motorcycle theft cases in Kidapawan City and surrounding North Cotabato towns in recent weeks.

Two Kidapawan City residents, Arleigh Fernandez and Glorianne Añonuevo, lost to thieves last weekend their Honda XRM motorcycles in dawn attacks right in their home yards.

Carjackers shot dead last Dec. 31 in North Cotabato’s Kabacan town a motorist and took his motorcycle. The same day barangay watchmen found the cadaver of a missing driver of a passenger motorcycle, commonly called “Habal-habal,” sprawled on a grassy lot in a residential area in Kidapawan City.

The Kidapawan City police recorded 42 cases of motorcycle theft in 2012 alone.

The police chief of North Cotabato’s Makilala town, Inspector Rizal Alolod, said they have enlisted the help of barangay officials and local Army units in their campaign against carjackers and thieves.

Several motorcycles have also been reported stolen in one attack after another in Makilala last year.

Policemen recovered last Tuesday a motorcycle found by villagers in an open field along a stretch of the Cotabato-Davao Highway in Kidapawan City.

Supt. Joseph Semillano, Kidapawan City police director, said the abandoned motorcycle was first noticed by a barangay traffic aide, who immediately reported what he found to village officials.

Semillano said investigators discovered that the motorcycle belong to a certain Rey Palmares, a resident of Mlang town also in North Cotabato.

Palmares lost his motorcycle to thieves Monday dawn, Semillano said. 

The incident was preceded by two separate attacks by motorcycle thieves in Makilala, where two residents lost their motorcycles without any trace.

Semillano said they will embark on “surprise inspections” of motorists at night time in areas where thieves have been operating with impunity.