Treñas wants City Proper police chief to address petty crimes
City Mayor Jerry Treñas has threatened to relieve Chief Inspector Conrado Carganillo, chief of City Proper Police Station, if he fails to solve the problems on the six major streets in the city identified by police as crime prone areas.
Treñas, in an interview with the Iloilo City Hall Press Corps yesterday, said Carganillo has to come up with specific solutions in solving the cases of pickpockets, cell phone snatching and hold-ups in his turf. Otherwise, Treñas said he will replace Carganillo with a new one who is capable of addressing the problem.
Reports reaching the City Hall beat said that Carganillo, in his report to Mayor Treñas, identified six streets in the city which are prone to pickpockets, cell phone snatching and hold-ups. These are: Ledesma, Valeria, J.M. Basa, Iznart, De Leon and Delgado.
The identification of the alleged crime-prone city streets was based on the number of reported cases to the City Proper police station.
Meanwhile, Chief Insp. Carganillo, in a telephone interview, clarified that what was indicated in the March 2008 report are the "areas of concern" of the police and not crime-prone areas in the city. He said the reporters who was able to obtain a copy of the report mistook the term areas of concern into crime-prone.
Carganillo said his report which contained statistics on pickpockets, cell phone snatching and hold-up is for a one month period and not on a daily basis. He said, there are at least 3-4 incidents of cell phone snatching in one month. He failed to give specific figures on the crime committed as contained in the March 2008 report. However, he stressed the city's crime rate is not alarming.
He further explained that they have only identified three major city streets as areas of concern, namely, Iznart, J.M. Basa and Ledesma, all in the city proper. He said the report did not include the three other streets mentioned in the media like Valeria, De Leon and Delgado.
Carganillo said that additional policemen are already deployed in the so-called areas of concern to address the occurrence of petty crimes. He said uniformed and non-uniformed police operatives are deployed in the area 24/7.
The number of cops stationed in the area is doubled during day time, Carganillo added.