AFTER a month of preparations followed by a month long implementation of the prepared security plan for each of the 16 core and 19 parallel activities of Higalaay Festival, the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office under the leadership of Police Senior Superintendent Nelson Aganon, CD, with all the hardship that the office experienced just to maintain the peaceful and orderly celebration of the city fiesta is proud to report that our efforts had paid off.
The negative criticism that were received by the city government as well as by the police office who closely worked with in ensuring the security as well as in maintaining peace and order of Higalaay Festival had not prevented the eagerness of the police force to maintain the peace and order of the month long activities in celebrating the city fiesta.
PSSUPT Aganon personally supervised the security plans that were prepared just to assure that the personnel that were detailed will perform their individual task and followed the protocols and guidelines being given to them. His personal supervision even made the security measure strong because he has personally seen the situation on the ground and made adjustment immediately to assure the security will work even better.
Part of the security measures being implemented were as follows; strong border checkpoints, random checkpoint of all police stations in all strategic area, strong area security with detail area supervisor, strengthened intelligence gathering and monitoring, intensified information dissemination, pre deployment briefings, security briefings of all members of security task force being created, security briefing of all force multipliers, implementation of prohibited items to use and bring along, regulation of using of drones, cutting off the signal of cell sites which had the most earned critics from several people who did not understand this security measure and many more.
These security measures were part of the reason why the city achieved the generally peaceful result.
The credit of the success of the maintenance of peace and order of the city fiesta celebration will always go to all people working under the Higalaay Festival Security Task Force and most especially to the Cagay-anons and all visitors who cooperated and help the security implementation under the overall supervision of Mayor Oscar S Moreno.
Indeed, collaboration, careful planning, and strategic implementation were key factors in the achievement of a relatively peaceful fiesta celebration. As long as we see you all safe and sound as you happily celebrated the fiesta is enough affirmation of the sacrifices that our men in uniform have done over the month. We can take criticisms, what we can’t take is disorder and chaos, all for the people of Cagayan de Oro City.