LUCENA CITY—The head of the Quezon police appealed to media and the public here not to fall for hoax text messages on crimes that didn’t occur.
Senior Supt. Erickson Velasquez said the hoax messages only spread panic. He asked people not to pass on hoax messages.
“Once anyone passes the messages, it only adds to more baseless confusion, fear and panic,” Velasquez told reporters in a forum here on Tuesday.
Two weeks ago, text messages about the abduction of teenage girls spread here and neighboring towns.
Some journalists here, however, fell for the hoax, reporting it and triggering panic among parents.
“It turned out that the text messages were hoax and only intended to create panic,” said Supt. Ramon Balauag, Lucena police chief.
Early this week, another text message also spread here also on the purported abduction of two female high school students.
After an investigation, Balauag said police found that the two weren’t abducted but ran away from home with their boyfriends.
Velasquez urged media and the public to first verify the veracity of any piece of information before passing this on.
“Every municipal police station is only a text away. They are the authorities who can attest if the message has basis or is just a hoax,” Velasquez said.