Summit urged to wage war on kidnaps

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—Northern Mindanao’s top police intelligence officer on Thursday called on Mayor Vicente Emano to convene an antikidnapping summit.

Senior Supt. Noel Armilla, intelligence chief of the Northern Mindanao police, made the call in the wake of Monday’s kidnapping of businessman Emmanuel Boniao.

Armilla said the city—through Emano and concerned citizens—should be able to formulate a program of action to prevent a repeat of Monday’s kidnapping.

Boniao is the sixth kidnap victim in Northern Mindanao this year.

Local business leaders earlier said the string of kidnappings in the city was a result of law enforcement failure.

Share the blame

But a local police officer, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of his statement, said businessmen and families of kidnap victims should share the blame.

The police officer said the practice of paying “board and lodging,” a euphemism for ransom, by families of kidnapped victims has pushed criminals to elevate kidnap for ransom into a “cottage industry.”

“We do not want them to pay ransom or to ‘reimburse’ kidnappers for their ‘board and lodging expenses,’” the police officer said.

He said also aggravating the problem is the lack of cooperation by victims after they were freed from captivity.

“There is no debriefing of the victims and often the victims refuse to file cases in court against these criminals,” he said.

Chief Insp. Reynante Royo Reyes, head of the Northern Mindanao police’s special operations group, said policemen recovered the vehicle that the suspects in the Boniao kidnapping used during an operation in Sumilao, Bukidnon, on Wednesday.

Reyes said recovered inside the abandoned vehicle were six blue police T-shirts, four police ball caps, a shirt with bloodstains, 22 cans of spray paint, three bottles of lacquer thinner, a roll of tape and a brown leather wallet. JB R. Deveza, Inquirer Mindanao