Cops mission: manage crime, 

keep COVID from spreading 

CORTES, Bohol Sept 5 (PIA)—With practically too much area for them to keep an eye on, Bohol police may yet have a huge task to accomplish as keeping crimes at bay while containing a pandemic that could potentially get to them too. 

However, faced with this daunting task, it just another day in a police life, hints Bohol Police Community Affairs and Development (PCAD) Unit head Police Major Jacinto Mandal, speaking at the Kapihan sa PIA commemorating Crime Prevention Month in September. 

The figures may be bad at all, but with the community to help as their eyes and ears and report immediately any crime; ongoing or consumated, police authorities are just there in the neighborhood, Major Mandal, who wears many hats at Camp Dagohoy and in Baclayon sa Police Station Chief assured. 

Grossly mismatched as to police and population ratio, Major Mandal said they may be thinly spread out, but they can still quickly respond to criminal activities, as long as somebody who cares and takes responsibility, calls the authorities. 

We may not be there right there and then, but we will be, he stressed even as he reinforces the need to get communities involved in crime busting. 

With police to population ratio at 1:1500, police authorities here have banked on force multipliers to help them out and up-root criminal elements that are just hiding in communities confident that the police always have their hands full always. 

We are still on Modified General Community Quarantine, although we have relaxed our measures, we still have to properly manage our peace and order while continuing on our education to the communities, so we stop motorists on checkpoints to remind them of the face masks policy, and not to apprehend them but get close to them to earn their trust and their cooperation, he explained. 

Now tapping non-government organizations and people’s organizations including citizens groups, blue guards, local Bantay Bayan groups, Barangay Peace Action Teams or barangay tanods, stakeholders and other groups as force multipliers, Camp Dagohoy, Bohol Police camp believes the manpower shortfall may not be that huge after all. 

With our force multipliers, they can be critically fed with relevant information by the community and effectively, crimes can be solved in less time, he highlighted. 

Picking Komunidad pangalagaan nang Pandemya at Krimen ay Maiwasan, Camp Dagohoy PCAD chief stressed that even with these, as long as communities do not help in managing crimes, there is very little the police can do. 

If there is a crime that transpired in the streets, the police may be blamed for that, but if crimes happen in the homes with everyone in the family seeing it and nobody acts, how do you expect the police to quickly solve it? he asked. 

Now thinly spread because they too have to man the quarantine checkpoints and some deployed in lockdowns, the police have come up with an ingenious way to make their presence known in the locked-down islands. 

Because we can not be visible at all times in a big island like Malingin in Bien Unido, we fly Saranggola ni PD, and when people look up, they will see the kite and get reminded that the police is always looking at them, Major Mandal said. 

Saranggola ni PD is also flown in Guindacpan Island in Talibon, where a small detachment of police officers complement the barangay officials and the local police in making sure the quarantine protocols are observed and that nobody gets in the islands. 

Under our dynamic Police Director Police Colonel Joselito Clarito, five of our staff officers met to implement more strengthened border control, when Bohol’s northern islands especially those facing Cebu have been suspected of allowing the entry of persons who may have brought in the virus and started the local transmission of the disease. 

We will continue to upgrade and enhance our border security plans, he remarked even as Camp Dogoyoy operations chief Police Major Norma Nuez bared that the P10,000 reward for anyone who could report illegal entry to Bohol by locally stranded individuals and OFWs remain without any takers. 

This as two Bohol islands have been having local transmissions with everyone claiming they have no travel history or close contact with outsiders. (rahchiu/PIA-7/Bohol) 

GETTING THE POLICE CLOSER TO COMMUNITIES. Bohol PCAD Unit Head Major Jacinto Mandal shares with information officers the police initiatives to counter youth recruitment and the organizing of local insurgents to regain their strengths here. (rahc/PIA-7/Bohol)

COVID COVERED. Police Maj Jacinto Mandal shared the best practices of Bohol Police against the fight with COVID-19, during a briefing on ending local communist armed conflict in Carmen last week. Police are asking community cooperation and participation in crime fighting now that the police force is also implementing quarantine measures and not just crime busting. (rahchiu/PIA-7/Bohol)