For Hilongos town fiesta Police taps tanods to augment security

HILONGOS, LEYTE, Philippines - The fiesta celebration in this town has officially started yesterday, and the chief of police deemed it necessary to get the tanods as augmentation force in security.

Chief Insp. Ramil Amodia, in a meeting with barangay officials, said the town police lacked personnel for effective maintenance of peace and order during fiesta so an augmentation force is needed.

"Hilongos is well known to be a crowd drawer; we need to augment our regular police with barangay tanods", Amodia told the barangay chairmen and councilmen, citing DILG order 546 mandating tanods as force multiplier.

Amodia requested the barangay officials for two tanods from each of the 48 barangays, and all tanods from the three barangays in the town proper.

The police and the barangay officials agreed to have security teams, each of which consists of one policeman and ten uniformed tanods positioned in strategic places during the celebration.

"From snatchers and pickpockets, to drug dealers and other community menace, we have to be one step ahead," Amodia said during the briefing that followed the meeting.

Mayor Jose Emery Roble has earlier given Amodia the go signal to tap the tanods, citing the hard task on security by only 20 policemen serving the more than 60,000 people of the town.

"With the cooperation of barangay officials and the residents, I am positive that we can prevent opportunistic individuals who would try to disrupt, discredit and probably sabotage the gains we are now starting to enjoy as a result of our collective efforts to showcase the best of Hilongos," Roble told The FREEMAN in a separate interview.

The barangay officials, for their part, agreed to the police plan but said they would also consult the DILG if the barangay government can allocate money for fare and other expenses for tanods in their official functions as augmentation force.

Roble told them also that he would also spend some money from his personal pocket to support the deployment of tanods.