THE top police official in Central Visayas has ordered his personnel to intensify patrols in the streets in the wake of robbery incidents that resulted in homicide.
Police Regional Office (PRO) 7 Director Debold Sinas said he had told the city and provincial police chiefs to increase police visibility in the streets and locate the hideouts of robbery groups.
“We are looking for the places where they hide so we can conduct a raid,” he said.
Sinas said the intelligence units have not yet monitored organized robbery groups operating in Cebu and other provinces in the region.
“They are operating independently in certain barangays,” he said.
On Wednesday dawn, Nov. 7, taxi driver Victorio Molina, 57, was shot dead by his two passengers inside a subdivision in Barangay Tisa, Cebu City. Robbery was eyed as the motive.
In Barangay Tinago, Cebu City, working college student Charice Mae Mancia, 23, was robbed inside her rented room and stabbed to death by Emelito Familiar Jr. last Nov. 4. The suspect was caught two days later.
Sinas, however, said the robbery-homicide incidents are not alarming, adding that some incidents happened because they were planned by the perpetrators.
According to the crime statistics kept by PRO 7, a decrease in robbery cases was recorded in the first nine months of 2018.
Robbery incidents fell to 944 from January to September this year from 1,706 incidents in the same period in 2017. There is a difference of 762 cases.
PRO 7 recorded 2,671 theft cases in January-September 2018, or a decrease of 1,300 from 3,971 cases in the same period last year.
Robbery and theft are part of the index crimes, which are those committed against persons and properties. (KAL)