No more Oplan Katok, 

Cops to ‘raid hot guns’ 

TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, December 20 (PIA)—Gun-owners who are now holding expired licenses for their guns better surrender their fire-arms for safekeeping if they could not process the renewal of permits immediately, because this time, there would be no more Oplan Katok. 

Police Superintendent Lorenzo Batuan, during the recent joint Provincial Peace and Order Council and Provincial Anti Drug Abuse Council, issued the warning just as police authorities recovered 263 fire arms in Bohol from January to November according to Camp Dagohoy Operations Office. 

Of the 263 firearms now kept safe in police vaults, 116 of them were surrendered by owners who thought keeping a gun with an expired license is just the same as keeping a loose fire-arm and is tantamount to a criminal act. 

Another 138 for the 263 fire-arms now under police custody have been recovered by confiscation, PSupt Batuan pointed out. 

With the elections looming and the Commission on Elections poised to fully implement the gun ban with the law enforcers, loose fire-arms in the hands of criminal elements or simply kept at home are hot temptations for abuse. 

Oplan Katok is a police implementation plan to get gun-owners with expired licenses to renew their fire-arm permits, or have these hot items stored in police vaults for safekeeping instead. 

Police stations across the province keep list of gun-owners in their areas of responsibility, a document the law enforcers acquire when the provincial firearms, explosives security and guards Supervision (FESAGS) which issues the licenses provides them for proper monitoring. 

With the police keeping records of gun-owners, they can easily see whose firearms have expired permits on their fire arms and police visit these owners, knock on their doors and remind them of the lapsed permit. 

As the permit owner processes his loose fire-arms, police often keep these guns as owners temporarily surrender them, as keeping these without valid licenses, makes them loose and thus keeping them, illegal. 

By this time however, PSupt. Batuan said they would not be knocking on the gun-owner’s doors. 

Anyone on record with an expired fire-arms license would be a subject for search operations and the police would go to the courts for a search warrant issuance and a raid could be impending, Camp Dagohoy warns. 

This year for example, Bohol police and their allied units in the towns have conducted 167 operations against loose fire-arms, arrested 92 persons during these operations and filed 86 cases of illegal possession of firearms, based on the applicable law. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)