Mar Roxas to cops: Work smarter

MANILA, Philippines - Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas is asking police officers in Metro Manila to not just work harder, but also work smarter.

“Working harder is not enough. We need to work smarter. What we want to develop is a dependable mechanism for developing outcomes, not hit and miss. This should be one that works when we put it in place and is a dependable one,” Roxas said in a statement.

Roxas noted that while some crimes such as hold-ups, robbery, theft, and drinking-spree induced homicide could be prevented by more police visibility, other crimes such as “crimes of passion” or those involving love triangles could not.

Roxas suggested that police stations in Metro Manila also employ statisticians who could make a regression analysis and point the three biggest change improvements and three biggest change deterrents in their respective areas.

“You should have statisticians in your police stations who would be able to make a regression analysis and determine the three biggest change improvements and the three biggest change deterrents in your areas of jurisdiction,” said Roxas.

Meanwhile, Roxas also stressed the need to augment the number of policemen in uniform in the streets by re-assigning the police in the offices to the field.

“These are men train trained in police work, in crime investigation and in battling criminals. They should be assigned in the field and civilians can take over their work in the offices,” he said.

While the incidence of crime at the National Capital Region (NCR) went down a little in the assessment of many police officers present, Roxas urged them not to be complacent but to beef-up more the presence of checkpoints, roaming police patrols, police trainees and other signs of police visibility.

Roxas also ordered the NCR Police Office to intensify OPLAN Katok, where addresses of persons with known expired firearms licenses are visited by uniformed policemen, as this would contribute to increased police presence in the different communities.

“The fact that crime went down is based on numbers, there is indeed a slight reduction in crime incidence. But we have to check whether this are only isolated variances,” he said.