Kalinga cops up checkpoints; eye non-locals, mobile traders

By Jesse Maguiya

TABUK CITY, Kalinga -- The provincial police of Kalinga will regularly conduct checkpoints in various areas of this upland province, especially on vehicles of non-residents, its director said Thursday.          

Residents, especially parents and barangay officials, have also been urged to ask all ambulant traders going to their communities -- scrap buyers, door-to-door merchants, and others -- to first register with their barangays before dealing with them. This is for authorities and residents to determine the identities of these people coming to their communities, especially when issues crop up later.

“To us, parents, and to the barangay officials, let us be careful. I think it is good if we suggest that all ambulant businessmen register with the barangay so that we would know that there are people going around our community who are selling their goods,” Senior Supt. Alfredo Dangani said in the Ilocano dialect.

The regular checkpoints and registration of ambulant traders with the barangay office are crime preventive measures thought of by the Kalinga Police, following the recent foiled abduction of a child in Pasil town and a separate rape incident in Lacnog village in this city.

Dangani said three persons, who had claimed to be workers of a company and who were on board a container van traveling from Abra to Apayao, tried to pull an 11-year-old boy into the container van in Pasil. However, the boy was able to escape and tell his parents about the incident, he said.

The suspects, later known to be from Laguna, Sorsogon, and Mindoro, were then arrested and formally charged before the provincial prosecutor's office, the provincial police chief said.

Dangani said the rape incident happened inside a church in Lacnog in Tabuk City, where the suspect brought the child to be raped.

He said the suspect was an ambulant scrap bottle and metal buyer from San Manuel, Isabela and was caught by members of the community. The suspect tried to escape, but was later pinned down in Quezon.

Dangani added he also learned from someone in Lubuagan town about a similar incident within the past two months.

“Someone from Lubuagan told me that there was a similar incident, where men driving a van went after a child but were not able to catch up with the child. Residents tried to go after the occupants of the van but were unable to arrest them. What’s wrong was they did not immediately report it to the police who could have conducted a checkpoint to arrest them,” he related.

He said reporting such incidents to the police would deter crime in Kalinga.  --  PNA