PRO-6 forms anti-robbery unit for Panay
Following the neutralization of two members of the dreaded Chiva-Fajardo Robbery Group, the Police Regional Office 6 is launching heightened offensives against hold-up men especially those operating in Iloilo.
Chief Supt. Samuel Pagdilao Jr., police regional director, said he has reconfigured the 6th Regional Public Safety Management Battalion to form another unit that would go after robbery groups operating in Panay.
He has designated Chief Insp. Melvin Ricohermoso to act as deputy chief of 6th RPSMB. His task is to lead a company of policemen from the unit that would operate in Panay.
The main bulk of the RPSMB personnel will still be based in Negros Occidental and would still be headed by group director, Supt. Remus Zacharias Canieso.
“With the reconfiguration, Supt. Canieso could concentrate in Negros Occidental while Chief Insp. Ricohermoso would take care of Panay area,” Pagdilao said.
Working in support of the internal security operations, the Ricohermoso-led company based in the PRO-6 headquarters at Camp Delgado, Iloilo City, will concentrate on anti-criminality efforts.
In coordination with the Regional Operations and Plans Division and the Iloilo Provincial Police Office, the team will determine which areas in Iloilo province they would be strengthening their police visibility operations and active placement of checkpoints.
“But probably, they might be seen more in the boundaries near Calinog town and Passi City,” Pagdilao said.
HOLISTIC APPROACH
With in a week, all investigation, intelligence, and operations officers of provincial and city police offices will also lay down information for the crime-clocking and crime-mapping efforts.
Through the crime map and crime clock, “our policemen would be intelligently deployed on the areas where crimes mostly happened and what time of the day they occurred,” Pagdilao said.
These areas will be also set-up with checkpoints and will be deployed with more mobile patrols.
Vowing to fight robbery through a holistic approach, Pagdilao said he would also ask for all investigation, intelligence, and operations officers of provincial and city police offices to still pursue unsolved robbery cases.
“We want to pursue this aggressively with the intelligence network identifying the members of a certain robbery group and the group who are responsible for a certain operation,” he added.
Still, Pagdilao said, “an important thing for us to fight criminality would be to prevent it from happening.”
