POLL PREPARATIONS. Personnel from the Police Regional Office-Central Visayas line up during the send-off ceremony for the Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections in October 2023. PRO-7 chief Anthony Aberin said he ordered station commanders to intensify the campaign against loose firearms in preparation for the midterm elections on May 12, 2025. (PNA file photo)
CEBU CITY – The top police official in Central Visayas on Wednesday vowed to strengthen the campaign against loose firearms to prevent armed criminal elements from disturbing the upcoming filing of the certificate of candidacy in October.
"Our campaign against criminality will continue to ensure that we will remain peaceful up to the midterm election next year,” Brig. General Anthony Aberin, chief of the Police Regional Office-7, said in a statement.
Aberin said he has a standing order to all station commanders to bolster strategies in arresting criminals who may be utilized to disrupt the elections in the region.
The filing of certificates of candidacy is from Oct. 1 to 8. The election period alongside the implementation of the gun ban will start on Jan. 12 up to June 11, 2025.
The election day is on May 12.
He said among the strategies is to put in jail the most wanted persons who have pending warrants for their arrest so that they would not be used by politicians who have wicked plans in next year’s election.
Meanwhile, Aberin said they had arrested 569 criminals in their week-long simultaneous anti-criminality and law enforcement operations in the region, 18 of them yielded loose firearms, 161 were drug personalities, 266 were illegal gamblers, and 124 were most wanted persons facing different criminal charges in court.
The police in the region, he said, confiscated a total of PHP44.7 million worth of illegal drugs in a series of operations from July 21 to 29. (PNA)
