PNP: 114 towns, cities classified as red-coded election hot spots

April 5 ------ More than 100 towns and cities have been classified as red-coded election hot spots, the Philippine National Police (PNP) disclosed on Monday, April 4. But PNP chief Gen. Dionardo Carlos said they are continuously monitoring the security situations across the country to determine if there are more areas that would be included in the hot spot list. “Our latest data is that there are 100 municipalities and 14 cities that are under the red-colored areas. These are the areas where we focus or monitoring and security measures,” said Carlos.

He said the more or less 300 election hot spots announced by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) may have included the yellow and orange categories. Police have four hot spot categories: green which means that there is no threat, yellow which means that there are manageable risk of election violence, orange which means that there is a potential risk of election violence while red which there is immediate threat of poll-related violence.

In most cases, the presence of armed groups like communist rebels and private armed groups is the main consideration in declaring an area as hot spots. As part of the preventive measures, Carlos said he had already ordered the activation of special operations task groups in areas declared as red-colored hot spots. “These SOTGs are deployed in these red areas to support the preparations being made by the different provinces or city, municipality police units,” said Carlos.

Source: mb.com.ph