BAGUIO City Police Office (BCPO) Director Eliseo Tanding expressed its readiness for the month long Panagbenga Festival.
Tanding explained the heightened alert status directive given by Camp Crame for all regional, provincial and city police offices nationwide to effect security measures.
“Generally, the Baguio City Police Office and the Police Regional Command is ready for this. What we are focusing on is intelligence offensive and intelligence gathering. That’s why our anti-criminality checkpoints which have been converted to Comelec checkpoints is part of our security precautions to deter those planning anything,” Tanding said.
The city director urged the public to be one with the police to help prevent possible crimes not only during the start of the Panagbenga but on a daily basis.
“The key to the success of our event lies on our unity, cooperation and coordination,” Tanding pointed out.
Tanding added there is no need to implement the “No Backpack” policy during the parade and other events of Panagbenga since Baguio City has always been known to be a peaceful city.
“We think that if we apply that, we will only be receiving negative feedbacks. We must be practical because hundreds of thousands will be joining us, we do not discourage them on the use of backpacks during the various events of Panagbenga,” Tanding added.
Meanwhile, Traffic Management Unit (TMU) head Police Chief Inspector Oliver Panabang assured their readiness in re-implementing its traffic management which it used last year.
“Every day is a challenge for the traffic enforcement unit because traffic is always present. We will be adopting the traffic deployment and traffic scheme we implemented last year because we have proven this to be effective but we will do some adjustments because of the difference of the volume of traffic between last year and from this year,” Panabang stated.
The BCPO and TMU are set to manage all critical and convergence areas by maximizing the deployment of its personnel who are to conduct traffic direction and control.
“For us in the PNP, as much as we would want to have additional support, we can only do so much. But since we have our volunteers, they will compliment in the deployment of our traffic units,” the TMU head said.
The BCPO will be deploying 427 police personnel for this year’s Panagbenga with additional forces coming from PROCOR to serve as support groups aside from the 1,400 volunteers.
“All critical areas which will be the concentration of the volume of vehicles on February 1 is where we will be focusing, we will not have any problems along the parade route because these areas will be closed to traffic,” Panabang added.
Except for designated parking areas, road parking areas will no longer be utilized or be used during the activity and will be cleared to maximize the use of the road.
The BCPO is calling on the residents and tourists in the city to refrain from using their vehicles going to the central business district and instead encourages them to walk.