By Jennifer P. Rendon
A long overdue promotion.
Months away from his retirement, Colonel Uldarico Garbanzos was designated commander of the Iloilo City Police Office (ICPO) effective Feb. 19, 2021.
Garbanzos, the outgoing chief of the Police Regional Office 6 (PRO) Regional Investigation and Detective Management Division (RIDMD), succeeded Colonel Eric Dampal, who enjoyed his ICPO stint for a year following his appointment on Feb. 20, 2020.
A native of Iloilo City, the newly-installed ICPO chief is no neophyte to the metro police works.
Garbanzos used to be assigned to the ICPO Operations Section before he was designated as chief of police of the districts of Molo, Arevalo, and Mandurriao.
He also went on a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Liberia.
Garbanzos then went back to the country and acted as La Paz police chief. He again went back on a UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti.
After completing his tour of duty, he again served at the ICPO operations section before becoming chief of the now-defunct Iloilo City Mobile Group.
His last assignment before temporarily leaving ICPO was deputy city director for operations.
Garbanzos then served in various positions at the PRO-6 headquarters before he was named ICPO director around 10 months before he would retire from the service.
As the new Iloilo City police chief, Garbanzos said that he would religiously follow the command guidelines.
And his marching order? “To run after loose firearms,” he said.
There were reports that one of the reasons why Dampal was relieved from post was his below par performance on the campaign against loose firearms.
He allegedly failed to deliver good results, given that many gun holders failed to renew their firearms, on top of the projected number of loose guns.
Apart from the campaign against illegally possessed firearms, Garbanzos said he would also set his eyes on the unsolved murders perpetrated by riding-in-tandem suspects.
Aside from investigation, the new ICPO chief would go for intelligence-driven placement of checkpoints.
“We might also be strengthening our Oplan Sita and Oplan Bakal,” he said.
Garbanzos would also propose to place additional patrols to do random checks in designated quarantine control points in the entry/exit points of Iloilo City.
“As to the other plans, we would go through it once I familiarize myself more with the OCPO environment,” he said.
