Alarcio, apparently fed up by the reports he has been receiving about street robberies and the robbery of a bank in Mandaue City last week, immediately issued the order to redeploy non-uniformed policemen in public utility jeepneys to avert street robberies.

Cebu City Police Director Melvin Gayotin, however, said the city police have been doing their job in ensuring peace and order here even at the onset of the preparation for the postponed summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Their operations include random checkpoints, serving of warrants of arrests, and increased police presence in crowded areas around Metro Cebu.

Secret marshals were deployed in public jeepneyes several months ago following the death of an 18-year-old female college student, who was shot by a man for her bag inside a for-hire jeepney. While the deployment of the secret marshal lessened the incidents or robberies, it didn’t stop the criminalities,

While the police believed that deploying secret marshals would help lessen the incidents of robbery in the city, Cebu City Vice Mayor Michael Rama yesterday said announcing the deployment of supposed "secret marshals" would only embarrass policemen if robberies still occur.

Rama, who earlier criticized policemen for announcing the deployment of secret marshals, said solving the economic problem of the country would surely help decrease crimes, not the random checkpoints nor the deployment of marshals.

Meanwhile, Cebu City Councilor Edgardo Labella asked the Department of Education to revive student crime prevention committees in schools to help authorities maintain peace and order.

Labella, in a proposed resolution, said that setting up such committees would not only help increase the involvement of students but would also serve as venue to heighten their awareness over the adverse effects of illegal drugs and activities in which the youth themselves are the victims.

The Student Crime Prevention Committee or SCPC is a DepEd program initiated sometime in 1994, which reportedly made a dent in curbing the involvement of youth and students in illicit activities.

Labella also said that revitalizing the crime prevention committees in the campuses is also a way to assist the various law enforcement agencies to address the perceived nagging youth crimes in the city.

He cited that a number of school-based youth organizations — such as fraternities — have been involved in violent confrontations, which usually take place outside school premises.

"There seems to be an imperative need to reactivate SCPCs in schools so that the youth awareness over ongoing efforts to involve the community in the government’s stepped-up drives against criminality in this city will be enhanced," Labella’s resolution reads.

The National Police Commission will also help coordinate, supervise and monitor the implementation of SCPCs as part of their commitment to a memorandum of understanding it had earlier forged with the DepEd and the Commission on Higher Education on the setting up of these campus-based crime prevention committees.