The Quezon City Police District (QCPD) is now looking into the possibility that the robbery gang that victimized a passenger bus along EDSA Thursday is the same group responsible for killing Makati police deputy chief Superintendent Joven Bocalbos last May 23.
“I have ordered the ballistics examination as early as Thursday afternoon to compare it with the guns used against Col. Bocalbos,” QCPD director Senior Superintendent Magtanggol Gatdula said in an interview with The STAR.
Members of the QCPD-Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) were able to recover three .45 caliber pistols, one 9-millimeter pistol, and a hand grenade from the six suspected bus robbers who were chased and cornered by Quezon City policemen in Valenzuela City.
The shootout resulted in the killing of three suspects and the arrest of three others.
Bocalbos was moonlighting as a driver for a passenger van plying Commonwealth Avenue when five robbers who posed as passengers shot him with a .45 caliber pistol late Wednesday.
Two suspects have been arrested and positively identified by witnesses as past of the five who held up Bocalbos’ Nissan Urvan van.
Gatdula said the bus robbers and Bocalbos’ killers have the same modus operandi – posing as passengers before declaring a robbery and divesting the passengers of money and valuables.
He directed Colonel Franklin Mabanag, chief of Quezon City’s Criminal Investigation Detection Unit, to investigate if the bus robbers and Bocalbos’ killers belong to the same group.
Gatdula has ordered an all-out war against robbers after Bocalbos’ murder, and has since ordered a review of old cases of robbers who have been in and out of jail. He said these robbers are repeat offenders and directed QCPD personnel to put them under surveillance.
Meanwhile, QC public information director Superintendent Apserino Cabula said among other measures undertaken by the police force is the deployment of marshals inside public utility vehicles to help protect commuters.
Cabula, however, refused to divulge details on the deployment “so as not to compromise our operations and the safety of our men.”
Gatdula attributed the string of successful operations against armed robbery gangs in the city to the rapid reaction units deployed to patrol city streets.
He said the full compliance by police station commanders in the campaign against street crimes by sending out more of their men on field patrols resulted in the killing of eight robbery suspects and the arrest of several others since last week.
“There is no other secret – no special equipment or gadgets – needed to combat holduppers and other lawless elements in the streets, just plain old police patrols,” Gatdula said.