Estrada mulls ban on ‘tandems’, Roxas orders checkpoints

UNEASY RIDERS Motorcycle users submit themselves to inspection at a police checkpoint in Quezon City after the interior department ordered an intensified campaign against bike-riding criminals. JOAN BONDOC

As a crime deterrent, can you actually ban motorcycle users riding in pairs?

Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada said his administration had begun studying such a measure, which was earlier proposed by a city councilor in 2012.

Gracing the 113th anniversary of the Manila Police District on Friday, Estrada raised the possibility of the ban a day after Interior Secretary Mar Roxas ordered round-the-clock checkpoints in the capital particularly directed at motorbike riders, hoping they could intercept so-called “riding-in-tandem” killers or robbers.

Talk of such a prohibition usually follows a spate of high-profile hits.

“We are still in the process of studying the constitutionality of this measure,” Estrada told reporters at the MPD headquarters in Ermita.

Vice Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso said the city council would schedule meetings with stakeholders to discuss the possible ban. “We are not in a hurry. We are still working on the details of the public consultations that we need to conduct,” Moreno said.

Based on MPD records, more than 100 crimes in the city—mostly shootings and robberies—were attributed to bike-riding perpetrators in 2013, with only two suspects killed in encounters with the police.

In 2012, Councilor Rodolfo Lacsamana proposed an ordinance banning tandem riders in the city.

The draft measure called for a P3,000 fine and a month-long jail time for violators.

But the proposed ordinance only passed first reading and drew no further action after it was referred to the committee on laws, according to Hector Pascual of the city records division.