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Manila police OIC an expert in hostage situations


It may sound a little ironic, but the new officer-in-charge of the Manila Police District (MPD), Senior Superintendent Francisco Villaroman, is an expert in hostage crisis. Villaroman was designated as MPD-OIC after Chief Superintendent Rodolfo Magtibay, MPD director, went on official leave after Monday’s bloody hostage-taking incident at the Quirino Grandstand in Manila garnered international criticism. Villaroman, who took up a hostage crisis management course in the British Scotland Yard in 1992, could have helped settle Monday's hostage crisis wherein eight Hong Kong tourists were killed. On August 23, a dismissed Senior Inspector Rolando Mendoza hijacked a tourist bus carrying 21 Hong Kong tourists and four Filipinos. After an 11-hour hostage drama, nine people died: the hostage-taker and eight Hong Kong tourists. Villaroman, who assumed office on Thursday, has already met with the commanders of the 11 stations as well as other officials. “Actually I was only designated as officer-in-charge. Meaning you are taking over the post temporarily unless later on if they still want you, then you will be designated permanent," Villaroman told reporters. PMAer Villaroman is a member of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) Class 1979. After graduation, Villaroman was assigned for seven years to Mindanao mostly to neutralize the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) rebels. In 1986, the year of the EDSA Revolution, he was assigned to Central Luzon where he also fought the communist rebels in Pampanga and Bulacan. He then became an intelligence officer in Camp Crame before he was assigned as the chief of police in Caloocan City. From 1996 to 1997, he became the detective bureau chief of the WPD before he was assigned as the intelligence officer in Region 4A (Calabarzon). Villaroman also became the chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in Police Regional Office 3 before being assigned to Mindanao for another seven years. He was the deputy intelligence chief before he was assigned to the MPD as OIC. - VVP/KBK, GMANews.TV

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