Tuesday, November 04, 2008 60% of crimes in Lapu involve minors: official
SIXTY percent of crimes in Lapu-Lapu City involve minors either as perpetrators or accomplices, a city official said.
Lapu-Lapu Vice Mayor Mario Amores, however, said the numbers should be blamed on the lack of resources of the local government unit (LGU) and not on the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006 or RA 9344.
Minors below 15 years old cannot be charged under the law. They are to be subjected only to intervention programs.
While the law allows the filing of a criminal complainant against those aged 15 to 18 years old before the court if it is established in the investigation by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) that they acted with discernment, still they can not be detained.
Good law
Amores said RA 9344, principally authored by Senator Francis Pangilinan, is a “good law.”
“(The) problem is on the LGU, not on the child having the habit of committing a crime because implementing the law depends on the available resources. The intervention programs can be effective to reform a minor if it is well-implemented and consistent,” Amores said.
Last Oct. 9, five people on a tricycle, two of them aged 15 and 17, were injured when ambushed by two members of Tau Gamma fraternity on Maximo Patalinjug Ave. in Barangay Basak.
Two of the wounded passengers are members of rival fraternity Alpha Kappa Rho (Akrho). Five days later an 18-year-old man was shot dead while walking on the same road by two men on a motorcycle.
But Acting City Police Director Mariano Natuel said most crimes with direct involvement by minors were either drug addiction or robbery and not killings. He could not give figures, however, because they are still consolidating records.
Child’s Code
The City Government adopted the Child’s Code of Lapu-Lapu City 2006 that spelled out its obligation to ensure the physical, moral, spiritual, intellectual and social well-being of the minor is protected.
The City Government is constructing a halfway house in Barangay Poblacion where minors in conflict with the law will be taken to undergo rehabilitation. The building will be managed by the social welfare office.
Natuel said that for now, the best strategy to prevent minors from committing a crime is to increase police visibility in areas where they regularly converge and limit permits for benefit dances.
Natuel said that being the recommending authority, his office will not recommend the issuance of a permit for a benefit dance unless it is held during fiestas and that barangay tanods are visible inside and outside the dance hall.
Amores said minors committing crimes is a national problem.
“I even have a copy of the petition coming from the police office in Cebu City on RA 9344. But for me the problem can become worse if an LGU lacks the resources to implement the law,” he said. (AIV)
