File photo by: JOSEPH B. MANZANO
BAGUIO CITY – Police authorities ordered operating units regionwide to intensify their intelligence build-up to thwart motives to ruin the peace and order situation in the Cordillera.
Newly-installed Police Regional Office–Cordillera (PRO-COR) regional director Chief Superintendent Rolando Nana said that aside from intensified intelligence build-up by the police and military, the public must also be proactive so that efforts to sow fear in strategic areas in the region can be thwarted so that the reign of peace and order will continue without undue prohibition and limitation because of security reasons.
“It just takes a visitor to turn the tide on the region’s peace and order situation that is why we have to be vigilant on the activities of people in our neighbourhood for us to deter any untoward incident that compromises the safety of life and limb,” Nana stressed.
The police official also supported the on-going conduct of profiling by barangay officials in the city’s 128 barangays on their constituents, visitors and transient residents in their areas of jurisdiction so that it will be easy for them to know the identities of the people living in their places.
Nana replaced Chief Superintendent Edward Caranza as PRO-COR regional director who has been reassigned as regional director of the PRO in Region 4A.
The new POR-COR chief claimed members of terrorist groups in the country are trying to look into places where they could establish their influence and use the same as their stepping stone in waging their agenda to change the situation in a certain place, especially in the Cordillera which is known as one of the most peaceful places in the country.
He commended the initiative of the different police operating units and the local governments in the region in formulating the appropriate anti-criminality, anti-insurgency and anti-terrorism efforts to thwart terroristic efforts to create trouble in any part of the region.
Nana solicited the sustained support of the people to the on-going programs and projects of the police and military for the greater welfare of the people who want to study, work, live and do business in these places.
Aside from peacekeeping programs and projects, Nana also underscored one of the priorities of law enforcers in coordination with the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) is the aggressive implementation of the government’s all-out campaign against illegal drugs in the region.
Among the illegal drugs that continue to proliferate in the region is shabu in Baguio and Abra and marijuana in the hinterlands of Kalinga and Benguet.
By Dexter A. See
