• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
The month long manhunt operations against wanted persons in Negros Occidental, including highly urbanized Bacolod City, led to the arrest of 318 fugitives for the month of February.
Among the arrests, the Negros Occidental Police Provincial Office apprehended 270, while the Bacolod City Police Office nabbed 48.
Thirty-six of the apprehended fugitives were classified by the police as Most Wanted Persons (MWPs), according to a report of the Police Regional Office 6.
All over the region, the Philippine National Police accounted for 545 fugitives, with 76 classified as MWPs.
The arrests made by the Negros Occidental Police Provincial Office accounts for 49 percent of the total arrests in Western Visayas.
PBrig. Gen. Jack Wanky, regional police director of Western Visayas, recognized the exemplary performance of all tracker teams across the region for locating and arresting the outlaws.
“The partnership we have with the stakeholders is one of the key instruments that led to these accomplishments,” Wanky said.
“To those wanted persons who are still in hiding, soonest, the long arms of the law will catch up with and bring you to the courts of law,” he added.*