The Baguio City Police Office (BCPO) recently formed some seven ‘red team’ that will be deployed in the different parts of the city to ensure that law enforcers are effectively and efficiently performing their assigned duties and responsibilities pursuant to established standards.
BCPO operations chief Lt. Col. Domingo Gambican disclosed that each of the teams will be composed of 4 organic members of the local police force that will be deployed in various parts of the city specifically to look into how law enforcers assigned in the different stations, border checkpoints and beats are performing their duties and responsibilities.
He admitted that after more than a year of strictly implementing the minimum public health standards, border control restrictions among other crime prevention tasks, law enforcers have somewhat been exhausted, thus, the need for the local police force to continue innovating strategies to keep them on their toes.
The police official claimed that part of the proposed strategies to adopted by the BCPO include the rotation of the police personnel managing the different quarantine control checkpoints leading to the city to ensure there will be no leniency in the enforcement of stricter border controls with the emerging threat of the Delta and Lambda variants of the dreaded Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Currently, BCPO has deployed around 170 police personnel to manage the 10 quarantine checkpoints in the different parts of the city aside from the law enforcers deployed to perform beat patrol, traffic management among others.
Gambican stipulated that the deployment of the ‘red teams’ will definitely help in ensuring that law enforcers will effectively and efficiently perform their assigned duties and responsibilities as those who will be found to have been remiss in doing so will be meted the appropriate sanctions.
The organization of the aforesaid teams is pursuant to the marching orders of BCPO City Director Police Col. Glen Lonogan upon the instruction of Mayor Benjamin B. Magalong to ensure that law enforcers will not be remiss in discharging their duties and responsibilities.
According to him, the different ‘red teams’ will be deployed round-the-clock as part of the efforts to monitor and validate the activities of the police personnel who had been assigned in different parts of the city, especially in the various established quarantine checkpoints to contain the influx of people who are not exempted under existing rules and regulations crafted by the inter-agency task force for the management of emerging infectious diseases.
Gambican appealed to residents and motorists who encounter certain delays in the checkpoints to be patient in awaiting the verification and validation of their documents because the police personnel are simply performing their job to avoid any untoward incident that might cause a sudden surge in COVId-19 cases in the city.
He asserted that law enforcers continue to be in high spirits in the performance of their duties because they know that it is for the welfare of the greater majority of the populace. By Dexter A. See