CEBU CITY — The Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) is in the final stages of mapping out security measures as it expects incidents of crimes to increase with the city’s celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Sinulog Festival and the feast of Sto. Niño de Cebu later this week.

CCPO Director Patrocinio Comendador said the City Police Office is coordinating with its counterparts in the neighboring island provinces to monitor lawless elements who might come to Cebu to victimize revelers and tourists witnessing the annual Sinulog mardi gras.

Incidents of jeepney robberies, snatching, pickpocketing, and other petty crimes are expected to rise during the Sinulog season as criminals exploit the fact that tourists come by the thousands during this time to take part in the grand celebration. Just last year, more than one million people witnessed the grand Sinulog Mardi Gras.

As of Tuesday, Comendador said the CCPO has already sent back at least seven suspected criminals to their ports of origin in Samar and Leyte upon their arrival in Cebu City based on recommendations from the police in Samar and Leyte.

The seven persons were either arrested before for robberies and other crimes in areas in Samar and Leyte or have been arrested in Cebu City for the same offenses, said Comendador.

“We urge the public to avoid wearing too much jewelry and carrying too much cash to avoid becoming preys to these criminals,” said Comendador, although he stressed that the CCPO has been conducting random checkpoints around the city to preempt the staging of robberies.

Based on their intelligence report, Comendador said a big-time armed robbery group from Ozamis City has arrived in Cebu since December but the police are closely monitoring the group. The group, he said, could pull out crimes outside Cebu City based on intelligence monitoring.

On Monday, two unidentified men wearing camouflage jackets and claiming to be members of the military, held up the operations manager of a gasoline station and carted away P890,000 in Carmen town, about 38 kilometers north of Cebu City.

The victim, Aquilles Bontia, was onboard his sports utility vehicle when the armed men flagged him down and informed him that he was being investigated for illegal drugs. The suspects told him they needed to inspect his vehicle.

Bontia, the operations manager of the Mount Zion gasoline station in Carmen, told police he informed the two men he was carrying the gasoline station’s earnings of P890,000, which he was supposed to deposit in a bank in nearby Danao City.

Bontia said the two robbers took the bag containing P890,000 and fled towards Danao City after they handcuffed him.

Comendador said it was very clear that the suspects in the Carmen town robbery were not local boys and could be part of the Ozamis group that arrived in Cebu last December.

He, however, believed that members of this group have local contacts around Cebu because they would have otherwise not known that Bontia is a gasoline station manager and was carrying large sum of money at the time of the robbery.