THE police should not leave any stone unturned in their investigation of the early evening robbery of the several shops inside J Centre Mall on Saturday even if three of the 15 robbers were arrested and the other four were dead after allegedly trying to grab the guns of the arresting police officers.
Now comes the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) who will investigate the death of the four robbers that were already under the custody of pursuing policemen from the Mandaue City Police Office. This would be good though for the cops to erase suspicions of a rubout.
Funny as it may seem, but the amount of money and the value of the goods robbed from the different shops have already increased to several millions of pesos from the original figure given. The police only recovered some P300,000 from those arrested. Are we to assume that the bulk of the money and the jewelry are with the other eight robbers who are still at large?
On the other hand, the mall management should give the police investigators a free hand in investigating all angles of the crime. That the mall security guards who were on duty during the heist are now considered “persons of interests” by the police investigators is a normal procedure and the mall management should not interfere.
Police Col. Ildibrande Usana, deputy regional director for administration, noticed the laxity of the mall security guards before the robbery took place. He said the footage of the mall’s closed-circuit TV showed that the 14-15 men acting strangely entered the mall hours before they staged the robbery at 7 p.m.
While the police may give consideration to the mall’s management practice not to arm the security guards inside the mall, but the reason given by the mall security and safety manager Gaspar Malanquis that they do not allow security guards to carry guns inside the mall to prevent a shooting encounter is not only outlandish but also outright silly.
With what happened on Saturday night, the management of J Centre Mall should not only consider revising its security measures by allowing the guards inside the mall to carry guns, but also contemplate about hiring another security agency that has the capability of providing better security services to the mall as well as its tenants and patrons.
It’s true that we’re good at retrospection, but the robbery in J Centre Mall, perhaps the first in Metro Cebu’s malls if my memory serves me right, could be attributed to nothing else but the utter laxity in security measures.
This mall is one of our destinations every weekend because it’s not so crowded. With what happened on Saturday night and, although I could not speak for the others, I can fairly assume that they also now are afraid of going to this mall even if someone said that “lightning doesn’t strike twice.”
Mandaue City Mayor Jonas Cortes had to convene on Monday the City Peace and Order Council, which was attended by representatives of J Centre Mall. The City Government could, perhaps, help address the mall’s security setback by assigning uniformed armed cops inside the mall. But that’s already after the fact. Or, require the mall management and the tenants to allow their security guards to carry firearms. Lesson learned!