THE Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP)-Davao Region will enforce stricter security measures to ensure that no cellphones or any gadgets will penetrate the jails.
BJMP spokesperson Jail Chief Inspector Pio Rosero told reporters on Wednesday, September 20, that the new BJMP chief has issued a marching order last week where he would implement a one-strike policy for personnel if operatives from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) will recover mobile phones during greyhound operations inside.
Under this, Rosero added that if operatives found a cellphone, the jail warden will be automatically relieved.
The Chief Superintendent Deogracias Tapayan, he directed all the BJMP nationwide to intensify greyhound operation and coordination with PDEA, PNP and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in intelligence gathering to flush out all contrabands inside jails.
He admitted that illegal contrabands continue to thrive inside the jail facilities because of the insufficient physical security and limited manpower resources which needs to be addressed.
The presence of cellular phone inside the jail facilities allows the drug transactions; thus, the national headquarters come up with an order to strengthen the security through the installation of electronic monitoring devices as well as jammers among others.
In Davao Region, 71.6 percent of the overall population of the jails stands at 4,844 and in Davao City Jail, 75 percent of 2,465.
Aside from that, the BJMP chief directed all the BJMP officers nationwide to conduct refresher on security policies to effectively monitor the inmates and their activities inside.
“Our acting chief also issued directive for us to realign our training development on security in order to sustain the knowledge and ability of our people with respect to security matters as well as capacitate them further in order to ensure the readiness of our people,” he said.
They also formed a feedback mechanism dubbed as “Etap mo si Sir Taps,” an electronic complaint counter, urging the public to report if they found irregularities among their personnel in the performance of their duty so that they could take proper action and rectify it.
He added that they would not tolerate any of their personnel who will be proven guilty for involvement in illegal drug trade.
Rosero cited that two of their personnel were arrested, one from Panabo District Jail identified as Jail Officer (JO1) Emmanuel Pañares and JO1 Manuel De Guzaman from Digos City Jail, who were both rapped for grieve misconduct.