Thursday, August 16, 2007 Editorial: Taking his leave
WITH City Police Director Superintendent Aurelio Trampe now taking his leave from his post and transferring to the Police Regional Office 10, one doesn't expect to see the end of complaints about the city's crime situation anytime soon.
Anyway city residents should reasonably expect his successor, acting City Police Director Antonio Montalba, to do a better job. Hopefully, he won't disappoint.
IT seems weird that while the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office (Cocpo) is busy attending to all the security preparations for this month's fiesta, their collective behinds were covered by the Criminal Investigation Detection Group10 as far as resolving two rape, robbery, and murder cases are concerned.
The first case is the rape and murder of a 15-year-old maid named Janet Sazel that occurred last Sunday and was capped off with the arrest of three suspects, all taxi drivers, by the CIDG 10 office.
This was followed by the robbery and murder of a taxi driver named Ferdinand Buhion by two unidentified assailants. And again, the CIDG 10 office is taking the lead in this case with the city police merely showing participation through the Scene of the Crime Operations (SOCO) unit.
Is the CIDG 10 covering for the duties of the city police as they ready for the security coverage of the city fiesta? While this may not be unusual, it does speak well about the capability of the city police in securing the safety of city residents.
The city police are considered in the frontline in terms of keeping the peace and investigating the crimes that occur within their jurisdiction.
If they had to rely on other agencies to do the job, then they are either overburdened, jerked off by criminals and their allies, slacked off and/or simply aren't capable of doing their jobs.
City Police Director Superintendent Aurelio Trampe can pick from these multiple choices or answer "none of the above." Even with their saturation campaigns, these crimes still occur.
Either way, it doesn't answer the question of why the CIDG 10 office would handle the investigation and resolution of crimes that in other parts of the country would have been left for local police to handle.
Hopefully, with Acting City Police Director Antonio Montalba in charge, that situation would be corrected. The city police certainly wouldn't want to be viewed as slacking off their jobs.
