GENERAL SANTOS CITY—Alarmed by the upsurge in summary killings, which have been gripping the city since last month, Mayor Darlene Antonino-Custodio on Friday issued an executive order declaring the city a no-firearm zone.
In her order, Custodio noted the prevalence of gun-related killings, which, according to her, “has already reached an alarming level.”
Last month, the police said 17 persons had died from gun and bladed weapons attacks by still unidentified suspects.
Some of the victims were suspected criminals, while the others were locked in disputes, the police said.
In regulating guns in the city, Custodio said only on-duty law enforcers and private security personnel would be allowed to carry firearms.
She said she had asked the local police and military units to make a report on private individuals issued with corresponding patrol order (PO) and mission orders (MO) for assessment.
PO and MO are the local versions of permit-to-carry (PTC).
“We need to know how many and who are the persons carrying firearms outside of their houses in the city,” Custodio said.
The gun ban could help stop the killings but for the previous ones to be solved, the police should exert more effort, she said.
Acting city police director Senior Supt. Cedric Train said the police were trying to bring the culprits to justice.
He said at least three cases had been filed against some suspects in the summary executions.
The lack of witnesses was preventing the police from moving forward in the case of other incidents, he said.
Based on police findings, the killings appeared to be unrelated and were motivated by either personal grudge or land dispute, he added.
Train said speculations that guns-for-hire were behind some of the killings could not be established yet.
“We are still in the process of investigation. We will try to find out if these killings were the handiwork of guns-for-hire,” he said. Aquiles Zonio, Inquirer Mindanao
You’ve just been succesfully led into believing that “gun bans” work by our Chief,PNP.
You’ve just declared your General Santos City as an OPEN CITY! for professional and would be criminals! awesome thinking process, how i wish Pacquiao won your position instead. Most of the times simple common-sense decisions is better than having a book worm,a person not on the ground, over-analyzing the whole thing!
IMHO this is a blessing in disguise on my part…this we will prove that declaring “GUN FREE ZONES” is advantageous to criminals…I’d rather put an eye on this event in Gen San. If we could prove that declaring such EO and its effect to public, we could have the support of the masses. Both parties will have an eye on this current events at Gen San especially the anti-guns group….here we could prove that it is useless, if we could have just the statistics on gun related incidents on that area, before and after declaration we could have a point and use the data later on in our endeavors.
a day after the announcement of the “gun free Zone” , 2 were killed. And counting…
She should assess her POLICE FORCE if its capable of fully implementing such EO and guaranteeing her people that you are fully SAFE. But i doubt she can Assure her constituents on their SAFETY and she just declare to make herself POLITICALLY POPULAR by sacrificing SAFETY. Many people thought that Manny Pacman is poor thinking decision maker coz he has no formal education but she is WORSE than a person who never attained Education by not using her common sense….