Tomas wants MPG placed under CSU

Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña wants the Mobile Patrol Group to become part of the city police's Crime Suppression Unit.

"I will sit down with them. It's not a matter of disbanding but conducting a thorough study... You can disband them on a standpoint that the Hunters Team becomes MPG," Osmeña told reporters yesterday morning.

Osmeña wants to upgrade the MPG at the same level as the CSU, or what was formerly named as the Hunters Team, so that it is almost assured that the ones that will be dispatched to respond to emergency calls or to "crisis" are the best policemen.

"You should organize it such as the first ones you dispatch in a crisis are your best people, even in ordinary alarms," Osmeña said.

In line with this objective, the mayor is suggesting MPG personnel undergo the same kind of training applied to members of the CSU, pointing out that those who do not qualify should not be made as part of the elite police group.

"In Los Angeles, the SWAT team is the mobile patrol. And the mobile patrol is already moving. Here, the mobile patrol says, 'you pick us up so we can respond beh.' It shouldn't be like that because every second counts. And they don't act as MPG even when they're already at the crime scene," the mayor said.

This suggestion of the mayor is to address the defect in the dispatching procedure of the MPG where the members of the CSU stays at the call center and wait until emergency calls come and do not even "react".

In addition, National Bureau of Investigation regional director Medardo Delemos has volunteered to lecture the city police on the rules of engagement.

"He's not involved with the Plantation Bay incident... He helps me in many cases where the police are not very effective," Osmeña said.

The mayor, however, lamented on the absence of a "real institutionalized system of continuous training".

"One of our problems usually is while we spend a lot of money for training of our policemen, they get transferred somewhere else," he said.

As part of his plan to improve the city police, he has tasked CSU trainer Bingen Mendezona to spearhead a case study on the procedures adopted by the city police in responding to an alarm to see if there are defects so corrective measures will be put in place.

This is following the killing of PO2 Armando Juegos and PO2 Oliver Jamboy of the CSU by a vendor when they responded to a call of domestic violence Sunday evening. - Cristina C. Birondo