CCTV live feed in Dagupan leads to arrest of robber in Tarlac

CAUGHT IN THE ACT | Police on Sunday released this photo of a 22-year-old robbery suspect (with his face blotted out) seated beside the money he allegedly stole from the finance office at the warehouse of a courier service in Gerona, Tarlac, at dawn on Friday. (Photo from the Gerona Municipal Police Station)

MABALACAT CITY, Pampanga, Philippines — A man who broke into a warehouse of courier company J&T Express in Gerona town in Tarlac province before dawn on Friday thought no one was there to see him rob the place until police showed up after being alerted to live footage of his crime.

Unbeknownst to the robber, his movement was being watched the whole time not in Gerona but in far away Dagupan City, which was over 80 kilometers from the town.

The information technology (IT) personnel of the company’s main office in Dagupan City in Pangasinan province were remotely monitoring the closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed at the company’s warehouse in Gerona and saw the 22-year-old suspect, whose identity was withheld by the police, entered the building.

In a statement on Saturday, the Gerona police said it dispatched a team to the J&T Express warehouse at 3:30 a.m. after receiving a call from the company’s main office in Dagupan City about the ongoing robbery.

“The IT personnel of J&T Express who monitored the incident at their head office in Dagupan City (through the CCTV camera feed) subsequently reported to this station via cellular phone that there was an ongoing robbery inside their warehouse located at Barangay San Antonio, Gerona, Tarlac,” Gerona police chief Lt. Col. Jaime Quicho Jr. said in the statement on Saturday.

The policemen caught the suspect in the act and recovered from him some P276,000 cash in different denominations. They said the suspect is a resident of Salapungan village in Gerona.

The Gerona police said the suspect was able to get inside the warehouse after destroying the sliding window of its toilet with pliers and allegedly took the money from the vault he forcibly opened in the finance office.

Quicho said appropriate charges would be filed against the suspect, now held by the Gerona police.