Friday, February 15, 2008 Jailbreaks rash annoys police chief By Mia E. Abellana Sun.Star Staff Reporter
MIFFED at the latest escape from detention, Cebu Provincial Police Office (CPPO) Director Carmelo Valmoria warned that the next time an escape happens, the police chief or officer-in-charge will be relieved from his post.
Worse, they will not be allowed to hold the post as chief of police as long as Valmoria is provincial director.
Valmoria gave the warning after ordering police station chiefs to inspect the jails in their stations weekly.
“I want this to be the last. There will be drastic actions on my part. I will not hesitate to relieve the chief of police if this happens again. We have to stop these incidents,” Valmoria told reporters yesterday.
He explained that the police chief is responsible for supervising the station’s personnel and that he did not want them to take for granted the duty of guarding the inmates.
“This time, the chief of police must ensure there will be no next time. We spend our resources in arresting these persons and one day, they just escape,” he said.
Insp. Leoncio Baliguat, chief of the Consolacion Police Station, will be the last police chief to escape Valmoria’s sanction. Valmoria started implementing his policy yesterday.
Baliguat is expected to submit his investigation report on the escape of three inmates from the Consolacion Police Station.
Lito Blanco, Gabriel Entera and Rogelio Miñoza bent a weak part of the iron grills of the cell and fled. Blanco, however, surrendered to a barangay councilor in Pulpogan, Consolacion.
Release
Entera was arrested in Barangay Ermita, Cebu City last Wednesday night by the station’s manhunt team.
A policeman assigned to the station lives in the area and when he heard Entera was back, he immediately informed his colleagues at the station and placed him under arrest.
Though he was set for release because the complainant was planning to drop the charges against him, Baliguat said they are studying the possibility of filing another case against them for bolting the jail.
At the time of the escape, the complainant had not yet signified the intention to drop the charges.
SPO2 Rizalino Aligno, who was the designated jailer, explained that he had other duties that day on top of being in charge of the jail.
He said he had to entertain a complainant because he was also the designated desk officer and that he had to prepare a spot report that had to be transmitted to the CPPO that afternoon.
“Dili man matunga akong lawas (I can’t be in two places at the same time),” he said.
Aside from Aligno, SPO1 Romulo Sasing and PO2 Ruben Alin of the station’s alert team were made to explain their failure to detect the escape.
Although two inmates were already recaptured, the three are not exonerated yet and are still under investigation.
Valmoria said he understood the predicament of police stations when it came to handling inmates.
He said some of them had to pay for the meals of the inmates even if this was the duty of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP), while other detention cells were cramped with more inmates than they can handle.
However, he said escapes were a security matter and that they needed to be “extra careful” and think of ways to avoid having inmates bolting out of their cells or escaping while in transit to the courts to attend a hearing.
“It is not acceptable for me. They have to think out of the box,” he said.
Valmoria said, though, that he wants to get in touch with the BJMP to see how they can help the police.
He pointed out that watching over inmates is the BJMP’s job and that personnel tasked as jailers could be useful for other police duties. Instead, they are stuck making sure inmates stayed in their cells.
He admitted, however, that the BJMP sorely lacked personnel to handle the jails.
“Pero kinahanglan gyud na eventually, ma-turnover na sa ilaha (But eventually, we have to turn over the responsibility to them),” he said, adding that police detention cells were only for temporary detention until commitment orders were issued for the arrested person.
But because there was also no space for new inmates at the jails they are committed to, some of the arrested individuals are returned to the station detention cells until they can be accommodated.
