Shooting incidents alarm Tuguegarao City police

by Oliver T. Baccay

Tuguegarao City (24 June) — The Police force of this city and the province are already alarmed of the series of shooting incidents happened in the past three days here.

Cagayan PNP Provincial Director Mao Aplasca immediately met the officers and personnel of Tuguegarao City Police Station to review their security plan after the series of shooting incidents happen in consecutive days including the case of PSI Hector Balinuyus who was shot to death in the middle of the day and in a busy road here. Aside from this, last June 21, 3 shooting incident happened in different times involving different victims and perpetrators.

“Three shooting incident in 1 day is no longer tolerable that is why we need to review the security plan of this city to see how we shall immediately address the problem”, Aplasca said.

Oh his assessment, he said that the crime reporting system of the said police station is very poor and slow. He also assessed that the public awareness on the PNP hotline number 166 and the PNP tipster numbers 09084498686 and 09177517207 is also poor and need to be advocated to the public.

Other than this, Aplasca also informed that the said police station is underman which has only 109 personnel in-charge in the security of more than 180,000 population.

“We are trying to augment some police force in this city from the provincial department and we also try to request additional policemen from the regional command to augment their force”, Aplasca said.

On the Balinuyus case, Aplasca informed that they already identified 5 witnesses and they are now ready to release the artist sketch of the suspect. On the other cases, the city police officers are now doing their best to resolve the cases.

Aplasca also ordered the City Chief of Police to implement aggressively their control system and ensure visibility day and night to all sections of the city. (PIA 2)