A third of Pangasinan cops have no guns
LINGAYEN–Almost a third of the province’s police force have no side arms and it may take another six years before the government can provide for them.
Senior Superintendent Percival Barba, police provincial director, bared this when he distributed 53 new short firearms to as many policemen last week.
Of Pangasinan’s 2,032 policemen, only 1,360 have side arms to date.
The new side arms came from the Philippine National Police (PNP) Headquarters, purchased from the yearly Procurement Program for Short Firearms of the Philippine National Police.
Barba said the purchase of short firearms by the PNP will continue until 2016 at which time all the 133,000 PNP personnel throughout the country would already have their own side arms.
While the police force in the province has 700 long firearms, these are mostly distributed to personnel of the Public Safety Mobile Companies.
Nonetheless, Barba said despite their lack of firearms, the provincial police were credited for making Pangasinan the most peaceful province in Region 1 during the last election.
He reported that the six private armed groups monitored during the election period had been neutralized with the arrest of some of their men.
SUMMARY EXECUTIONS
Meanwhile, Barba also announced that the series of reported summary executions in Pangasinan have now been solved with the identification and filing of cases against the suspects.
These cases include the reported killings perpetrated by men riding in tandem on a motorcycle in Sta. Barbara, Binmaley and Mangatarem.
Barba recently reactivated Task Force Hagibis and was placed under the Special Operations Group to go after killers riding in tandem on motorcycles.
As of last week, no new killings were reported as members of Task Force Hagibis began patrolling the highways.—LM
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