Cebu City Police Asks For More Communication Equipment, Patrol Cars

The Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) has asked for 1,087 high-frequency radios from Camp Crame for its response team and 18 patrol cars from the Cebu City Government.

Sr. Supt. Benjamin Santos, CCPO director, said he already phoned the PNP for the radios, which uses the Tetra (trans-European trunked radio) system.

“The bidding is still going on under the Department of Budget and Management and hopefully we’ll have one radio per police officer,” he said.

The PNP General Appropriations Act of 2016 has Php 61 million for 122 units of HF/SSB base radio transceivers and Php 106,662,000 for 87 units of low-band tactical transceivers with accessories.

Santos said the city police targets a ratio of 1:1 radio per police officer.

There are currently 1,300 police officers in Cebu City and only 213 PNP-issued radios were provided to different police stations and units in the CCPO.

Santos stressed the importance of the radios during alarms.

He said some officers buy their own radio to monitor their beat.

But some of these radios, which are cheaper than the Tetra, have no function for transmitting a response and only receive the alarm through the frequency.

The Tetra radio is a professional mobile radio that has a two-way transceiver function and is specifically designed for police work.

It also has a global positioning system (GPS) to locate the police officer who is responding to an alarm.

The CCPO also requested 18 vehicles from the Cebu City Government in addition to the cars that are being used by the Mobile Patrol Group (MPG) and Special Weapons and Tactics (Swat) team.

Santos requested for 15 pick-up vehicles and three vans for MPG and Swat. (PNA) RMA/EB/SSC