Forceful moves vs crime vowed

The government will not hesitate to use all its resources, including the military, to carry out an ongoing crackdown on crime following the arrest of several bank robbery suspects, President Arroyo said yesterday.

"Crime does not pay, whether for petty snatchers or rogues in uniform," she said in a statement.

Mrs. Arroyo ordered an intensive manhunt for armed robbers who killed five mining company employees in a gold heist in Benguet province Saturday night.

The gunmen shot dead five employees of Lepanto Mining Co. on Saturday and stole 21 kilos of gold that they had been transporting.

It was the latest in a series of spectacular robberies by heavily armed men, raising suspicions that rogue troops or police might be involved.

Mrs. Arroyo commended police for the arrest Sunday of nine suspects in a recent string of bank robberies in Manila, including a daring noonday heist of Citibank’s main branch right in the heart of Makati City’s financial district.

"The Citibank robbery has been an international embarrassment and I commend the military and police for arresting the suspects in a determined and forceful fashion," she said.

"The next step is to establish the links between this group and other underworld networks so that we can bring these criminal conspiracies out of the woodwork," the President said.

The Arroyo administration suspects that the recent spate of spectacular crimes was part of a possible plot to destabilize the government.

Mrs. Arroyo said she wanted the gold heist suspects tracked down "with the same degree of decisiveness" in the Sunday operation.

Troops and an armored personnel carrier were called in when the arresting officers ran into stiff resistance from the heavily armed suspects, some of who were former soldiers.

Criticized for the heavy firepower, Director General Hermogenes Ebdane, chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), said they were expecting a fierce gunbattle and they needed to be ready for that.

Yesterday, Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye also defended the raid in Taguig.

"What we wish to state is the Taguig operation is an honest-to-goodness operation of the PNP to really go after bank robbery syndicates," Bunye told reporters.

"And we’re glad it yielded positive results and the President herself congratulated both the (military) and the PNP for these operations," he said.

Aside from a surge of robberies, anti-crime groups have recently warned of a rash of new kidnappings for ransom in recent months, often targeting Filipino-Chinese families who are widely perceived to be wealthy and reluctant to report crimes.

Ebdane earlier said that politicians opposed to the administration might be involved in the crime wave.

Mrs. Arroyo has ordered police to step up its campaign against kidnappings. Police had been successful in busting several kidnapping gangs in the past but new groups have sprouted, she said.

The police must "make a quick reassessment and a new order of battle, followed by a renewed crackdown," Mrs. Arroyo said, adding that the fight against kidnapping was "of crucial importance to business confidence." — With AFP