Police likely to skip gun taping tradition
It has been customary for Central Visayas police to symbolically tape the muzzles of their firearms in unity with the campaign against indiscriminate firing during the holiday season.
But this year, authorities may have to break the tradition.
Senior Superintendent Jonathan Cabal, chief of the Regional Intelligence Division, has qualms on the proposal to tape police firearms’ muzzles at this time of the year in the wake of the string of rebel attacks on police stations.
“We know for a fact that the threat of the New People’s Army is real, at siyempre we cannot simply tape the muzzle our guns and be at a disadvantage,” Cabal told reporters yesterday.
Just recently President Rodrigo Duterte tagged the NPAs as terrorists and ordered law enforcers to shoot them on sight.
In response, Communist Party of the PhilippinesNPA founder Jose Maria Sison also declared an allout war against the Duterte administration.
Cabal assured though that efforts are done to ensure that the community is safe from terroristic attacks, with “target-hardening measures” in place.
He said police are not taking chances when it comes to the security of the public, as well as their own police detachments, after the alleged NPA attacks in Misamis Oriental and Camarines Norte.
Cabal said the security and safety of the community should come first before anything else.
“First and foremost our duty is to serve and protect. Muzzling of the firearm is a symbolic gesture of the Philippine National Police that we are not engaged in illegal discharge of firearm,” he said.
The final directive on the taping of firearm muzzles, though, will come from higher authorities, he added.
With communist rebels intensifying their attacks on government forces, the military on Monday called anew on NPA to “surrender or suffer the same fate as their cohorts killed in the latest military operations.”
“While we are hopeful that more NPAs will surrender in the coming days, our troops on the ground will continue with our relentless operations against them who remain active in their violent and destructive criminal activities against our people in the communities,” Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Public Affairs Office chief Col. Edgard Arevalo said in a statement.