THE Cagayan de Oro City Government has adopted a legal brief as the official guide of the police’s “anti-tambay” (anti-loiterers) drive following concerns raised by different sectors.
City Administrator Teddy Sabuga-a said they have taken note of the concerns raised regarding the arrests made by law enforcers as well as of the police’s own reservations on the apparent lack of clear-cut guidelines on the anti-tambay drive.
Sabuga-a said lawyer Dale Mordeno, former president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) in Misamis Oriental and Cagayan de Oro and also a former member of the Board of Directors of the IBP National Directorate, came up with a “Legal Brief: On Campaign Against Tambays.”
“It provides us background on the notion of tambay as commonly understood by Filipinos, so we adopted it, we sent it to the concerned agencies, including our law enforcers, to make it their official guide when they are implementing it,” he said.
Mordeno's briefer suggests that the local government name its own local campaign “Oplan Neighborhood Crime Prevention (NCP),” “Opan Anti-Tambay,” “Oplan Tambay Prevention,” to educate the public that the campaign is not about arresting tambays or loiterers but to discourage them from idling over protracted time.
Mordeno agreed that innocent or harmless activities arising from tambays are part of the natural amenities of life, thus, to aid police in identifying their limits, the local government can provide them a compilation of the city ordinances that regulate certain acts. He also suggested that such forbidden acts should be republished to spread public awareness.
He also recommended that there should be a “prior warning rule” or giving the offenders second chance if they are first-time offenders, while arrested minor offenders shall be deemed automatically as “children in conflict of law” and should be referred to the social welfare office.
The first weeks in the implementation of the tambay campaign in the city was not a smooth ride for the police, as others complained of human rights violations. In the following days, law enforcers were however cautious and even applied the “prior warning rule” in the case of the city's anti-smoking campaign.
“Attorney Mordeno advocates for a stronger collaboration between the local government and law enforcement agencies in the information dissemination, and he also pointed out the need to harmonize the powers of the State and the human rights protection,” Sabuga-a said.
“The city expresses its gratitude to Attorney Mordeno for providing clarifications on the ticklish issues involved, particularly those having legal implications which affect the rights of the people. Thus, it adopts the legal brief as an appropriate guide to our local implementation here,” he added.