Assault rifles for cops during ASEAN Summit Jolene Bulambot Cebu Daily News
November 14, 2006
Armed and ready.
The members of the Cebu Provincial Police Office Special Reaction Unit (SRU) will now be equipped with sophisticated assault rifles, which they will be using during the 12th meeting of the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) next month.
Cebu Governor Gwen Garcia on Monday turned over the 20 high-powered firearms to Senior Superintendent Vicente Loot, provincial police director.
Eighteen of these firearms were M4 assault rifles while two others were Squad Assault Weapon (SAW), which could be converted into sniper rifles. These special weapons were equipped with special gadgets such as the red dots scope designed for close-in battles or urban warfare.
“This would be the first batch of 60 squad assault rifles to arrive. More will come two or three weeks from now. This would be the first time in Central Visayas that we are using refurbished firearms such as these,” Loot said.
Some 60 “unserviceable” high-powered firearms were brought to Cebu from Camp Crame about three weeks ago. These were refurbished by a gun manufacturer in Mandaue City, resulting in 70 percent savings
A brand new M4 rifle costs about P200,000, while a SAW is worth about P250,000. The provincial government spent an average of P80,000 to refurbish each rifle.
Accessory parts were imported from the United States. The Capitol tapped Safari Land Arms Corporation to conduct the repair and refurbishing.
Chief Superintendent Silverio Alarcio Jr., police director for Central Visayas, said he would like to correct the misimpression that refurbished firearms were of inferior quality.
He said the guns could be considered good as new, and could be used for both insurgency and police operations.
These are special weapons designed for SRU, he said.
The SRU policemen would handle internal security operations during the 12th ASEAN Summit on December 11-14.
About 40 SRU personnel would be sent to northern and southern Cebu towns, especially in the mountains to thwart any rebel attacks.
“The SRU would be the rear security for Cebu,” said Loot.
