By Aaron Recuenco
The National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) has accounted for almost 71 percent of wanted persons in its list in just a span of one year, one of the fastest and highest in terms of running after wanted criminals in the country.
(MANILA BULLETIN)
Based on the data of the Philippine National Police (PNP), the NCRPO was able to locate 605 of wanted persons out of the 854 wanted criminals on the lists of Metro Manila police wanted criminals.
The data is from June 2018 to June 2019.
Of the 854 wanted criminals, 293 of them were arrested in various police operations in different areas in the country while 200 were forced to surrender when Metro Manila policemen started talking to their relatives.
NCRPO director Maj. Gen. Guillermo Eleazar, said the fast and high results of accounting criminals were an offshoot of his order for all commanders to also prioritize wanted criminals.
This, after past PNP analysis in the past revealed that in some cases, a wanted criminal would turn out to be responsible for two or multiple criminal cases.
"We want to deny them the opportunity to conduct other criminal activities and the answer to that is aggressive follow-up operations in order to send a message that we are serious in making them pay for their crime," said Eleazar.
The same PNP data revealed that 25 of the wanted persons were killed in police operations while three already died before NCRPO cops located them.
The tracking system of the NCRPO also disclosed that 84 of wanted persons in its list were subject of Homicide Cases Under Investigation, or those who were killed by unidentified assailants.
It was not immediately clear how many of the cases of the 84 slain wanted persons under HCUI are drug-related.
Eleazar said that there is still a need for them to track down 243 other wanted criminals.
Based on the PNP data, 166 of those wanted in NCRPO list can no longer be traced along with 30 other elusive criminals.
On the other hand, Eleazar said that they already have good leads to at least 53 other wanted criminals.