Security oversight

Was it a case of oversight or was the legal counsel of M. Lhullier pawnshop’s Toledo City branch not telling the whole story as far as the security detail in the recent robbery is concerned?

According to Manolatte Dinsay, M. Lhullier lawyer for Visayas and Mindanao operations, the pawnshop didn’t call for police escorts when three tellers withdrew money from a nearby Metrobank branch.

Dinsay also claimed that the three tellers rode in a company vehicle when they withdrew money from the bank. But Insp. Bonifacio Lucerna, acting Toledo City police chief, said some witnesses saw differently.

He said the three tellers and the bank manager would just walk to the Metrobank branch near their office to deposit and withdraw their cash. Lucerna said the pawnshop manager informed the police three days after the incident.

There were no bank statement or withdrawal slip to indicate that the amount stolen from the tellers, one of whom was killed, was P2.5 million. Talk about questionable security policies.

“Nobody from the pawnshop reported the incident to us. We just received a call from a concerned citizen,” Lucerna said. Dinsay said security policies were in place and they saw no need to ask for police escorts.

They may have good reason to. One of the robberies that occurred near a Lapu-Lapu City bridge was carried out by armed men wearing police uniforms. The robbery occurred in broad daylight and with the precision of professional criminals.

That said, the company’s security policies still failed to protect their employees and their cash from the robbers. Worse, it resulted in the death of Domingo del Pilar, a pawnshop teller barely three months on the job and whose wife is a loyal employee who got promoted to manager recently.

Never mind if there were two suspects arrested and one shot down following a buy-bust operation. The fact is, the company should have immediately informed the police about the robbery and not three days after.

The pawnshop management’s internal investigations has so far produced nothing that would indicate that the robberies were inside jobs done in conspiracy with criminal elements.

It doesn’t help that the robberies occurred despite the company’s supposedly stringent security measures. The latest robbery in Toledo City should be the last straw.

With Del Pilar’s death, what’s to prevent these criminal elements from staging another robbery anew? With two suspects in jail, we could only hope that M. Lhullier will extend its full cooperation in providing evidence that will identify the perpetrators and root out the syndicate behind the robberies.