■ ‘BURGLAR' CAUGHT AFTER TAKING 4 LAPTOPS FROM CEBU CITY GOVERNMENT'S LAWYERS

For a building guarded by security personnel 24/7 and with a police station just some 170 meters away, a robbery at Cebu City Hall may be impossible.

But over the weekend, four laptops owned by City Hall lawyers handling controversial cases were stolen from the City Legal Office, which is on the ground floor of the legislative building.

Initial investigation by the Waterfront Police Station revealed that the suspect, identified as Ryan Cimafranca, admitted to targeting the files stored in the lawyers’ computers.

Because of this, Mayor Tomas Osmeña suspects that the robbery might be an inside job.

“I think so. The lawyers who lost their laptops were the ones who are active in filing cases against anomalies in city hall. The other laptops were not touched. What I was told was that during the time of the robbery, all the CCTVs (closed-circuit televisions) were shut down,” he said.

The mayor added that the City Government will file charges against Cimafranca, who is reportedly a son of a fixer who frequents the area. Authorities were able to recover three of the four stolen laptops from the 19-year-old suspect when he was arrested Monday night.

Osmeña has also assigned Nagiel Bañacia, head of the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Office to investigate.

City Attorney Joseph Bernaldez said it was their office staff who discovered that one drawer was opened and that one of the cubicles was ransacked Monday morning.