Sen. Panfilo Lacson. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Malacañang yesterday said it would consider Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s suggestion that mobile checkpoints be maintained even after President Duterte ordered the dismantling of security checkpoints nationwide.
“We welcome this suggestion of Lacson as we find better means on how to thwart possible threats of violence without causing undue inconvenience to the public,” Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said in a statement.
He clarified that what Mr. Duterte wanted to remove were the fixed road security blockades set up by the police and military as part of their law enforcement operations.
Patrol duties
Andanar said the suggestion of Lacson, a former chief of the Philippine National Police, to set up mobile checkpoints would mean “more policemen conducting mobile patrol duties or policemen inside their patrol cars plying around an area.”
“This is different from the fixed (road) checkpoints where policemen are in one area asking motorists to stop,” he said.
In his visit to Cotabato City on Saturday, Mr. Duterte said he was not pleased with the unnecessary inconvenience that security checkpoints had been causing to motorists and ordered a halt to the practice.
Directive
He issued the directive a day after Mayor Samsudin Dimaukom of Datu Saudi Ampatuan in Maguindanao and nine of his men were killed in a supposed gunfight with the police in a security checkpoint in Makilala, North Cotabato.
“Only if it is necessary, only if there is specific reason to do it, I am ordering all checkpoints dismantled,” the President said, adding:
“And that is for the entire country. I do not want these checkpoints.”
In response to the President’s order, Lacson said mobile checkpoints were proven to be more effective in anticrime operations by the police.
The senator said fixed checkpoints had also become a milking cow of sorts for abusive and mulcting policemen preying on innocent motorists and traders. —MARLON RAMOS