Police to be on heightened alert a week before school opens

Starting June 7, police personnel in Metro Manila will be on heightened alert to ensure security of parents and students a week before the start of the school year. Three-fourths of police personnel in Metro Manila is expected be on duty at any given time starting June 7, Metro Manila police chief Director Roberto Rosales said. “We will place our forces on heightened alert. This means 75 percent will be found in the streets. We will have increased police visibility," Rosales said in an interview on dzXL radio. The one-week head start will allow police to serve arrest and search warrants on suspected criminals and their hideouts. For their part, teams from the Education and Trade Departments inspected vendors of school supplies in Manila's Divisoria district, even as environmental groups called for random tests on school supplies for possible toxic materials. Once classes start, contingency measures they mapped out last month should be in place, Rosales said, adding that measures include putting up police assistance centers near schools, flushing out criminal elements, and conducting anti-street crime operations. Education officials have set the opening of the new school year for elementary and high school to June 14. For his part, Metro Manila police spokesman Superintendent Rommel Miranda said the police are now on the lookout for robbers victimizing parents with tuition money. In a separate interview on dzXL, Miranda said that police will also rely on closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems especially in the University Belt. “We expect to deploy about 8,000 police personnel," he said. Police will coordinate with the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority to facilitate traffic, he added. In a related development, This coming week, the Department of Education will start this coming week its "Brigada Eskwela" program to clean up schools in time for the opening of classes. DepEd Secretary Mona Valisno particularly ordered all ads and campaign materials removed from school premises. On Tuesday, inspection teams from the Education and Trade Departments inspected vendors of school supplies particularly in Manila's Divisoria district, dzBB radio reported. Parents had been flocking to the area to buy lower-priced school supplies and uniforms. The report said the teams did not initially find gross overpricing of products. - RJAB Jr., GMANews.TV