BEHIND THE SCENES

PRO-Cordillera barangay proactive security program
(By Supt. Joseph Adnol, guest columnist and information officer of the Cordillera regional police office)

On the onset of the opening of classes, the Cordillera regional police office has launched its Barangay Proactive Security Program geared to mobilize organized anti-crime groups, citizen police, force multipliers, tanods, volunteers and the community as a proactive machinery in the barangays in the prevention of crimes.

The PRO-Cordillera had been organizing the community into force multipliers with the objective of helping the police in its crime prevention efforts. With the launching of the BPSP in Cordillera, it will surely strengthen the needed partnership of the community and the police in the region.

This program also involves the strengthening, expansion of the Barangay Peace and Order Committee which is the authoritative body to oversee the peace and order situation in barangays.

Pursuant to the law, the BPOC should conduct its regular meeting at least once a month. Members of the committee are barangay multi-sectoral representatives with the police as mandatory member of this committee.

With the activation, expansion and strengthening of the BPOC, it will serve as the nucleus and authority of the Barangay Proactive Security Program which shall oversee, supervise, monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the program.

The BPOC shall accredit and maintain a masterlist of organized anti-crime groups and mobilize them and the police specifically for proactive efforts or measures to prevent crimes in the barangay.

It is observed that the community come and seek for police services only when a crime has happened. In the BPSP, the community shall be taught and shall endeavor in utilizing or summoning the police for proactive measures to prevent crime.

Thus, in this program, it will enhance from the community the initiative to mobilize the police and the organized anti-crime groups to be visible when they sense a situation that may lead to a crime.

This is a right of the community through the BPOC to call or summon the police to ensure that they are visible in the barangay. The privilege of the community to ask for policemen to be present during meetings, occasions like fiesta, canao or in a situation that needs police presence must be a way of life.

The community should always ensure that police services are at hand especially in times of peace and not in times of crime, as it will already be late. The proper moment to avail police services in times of peace so peace will be sustained because peace means no crime.

Hence, the BPSP is geared to ensure that no crime will happen in the barangay. The community, through the barangay peace and order community, can plan, supervise, monitor and evaluate peace and order efforts initiated and implemented in the barangay.

The BPOC is a body authorized by the government and the most powerful body in the barangay to oversee the peace situation in the locality. Hence, in the BPSP it will encourage all barangay chairmen to activate, strengthen and expand their BPOC and effectively function to which it was created.

The BPSP is a project of PRO-Cordillera to address street crimes and cases of crimes against property in the barangays. The BPSP has the principle of crime prevention as everybody’s concern and that peace and order means in fighting crime.

The community through the anti-crime groups, the local government through the Barangay Peace and Order Committee and law enforcement, the police must join efforts to establish the Barangay Proactive Security Program as the best strategy to prevent crimes in the barangays through the utilization, mobilization, application, and institutionalization of the program as a strategy for a no crime barangay. Hence, every Cordilleran should participate for lasting peace.