San Carlos crimes drop, thanks to aggressive police

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

SAN CARLOS CITY – The crime indices on murders and homicides are at their lowest because of the pro-active stance of the chief of police here.

Supt. Charles Umayam (extreme right) with fellow
police officials in a seminar.

Superintendent Charles Umayam said that he maintains a regular consultation with the residents of the 86 villages here.

To deter crimes like murder and homicide his strategy is to implement the Lambat-Sibat and to make his police more aggressive on its campaign against criminalities.

Umayam bared that in January to August 2014 there were eight murder incidents and zero homicide here. Five of these murders were solved. In the same period in 2015, he continued, there were five murder incidents and four homicides here but four of the murders had been solved by his office while two of the homicides were solved, too.

Murder is the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another while homicide does not require the premeditation of the criminal to be taken into account, and the fact that a man has died because of the fault of another person is enough to refer the act as homicide.

Oplan Lambat – Sibat is a new intensified anti-crime campaign of the Philippine National Police. It aims to audit PNP's crime incident reports to identify which police stations are manipulating crime figures and determine the real situation on the ground. It was designed as a unified intelligence target operations of the PNP using combined intelligence resources of various operating units.

Earlier the police office here has been hailed by Regional Trial Court Judge Renato Pinlac for its high conviction rates versus arrested illegal drug pushers. Judge Pinlac said unlike before when the cases against peddlers filed by the police have been thrown out by the prosecutors or judges or the defendants exonerated by the court, drug cases nowadays have a high conviction rates.

“That was after a seminar was called on how search warrant (SW) and arrest of suspected pushers were done” he said.

Reports from the Pangasinan Police Office (PPO) said that the success of arresting and chalking-up a high conviction rates were due to the police’s Case Operational Plan before they apply for a search warrants  or conduct buy-bust operations versus the culprits.

According to the Integrated Bar of the Philippine-Pangasinan Chapter  (IBP-PC) the conviction rate by the courts of persons charged for violation Republic Act 9165 or the anti-illegal drugs act is now at 80 percent.

Superintendent Umayam collaborated the observation of this city’s RTC Judge Pinlac, PPO, and the IBP-PC.