HPG, Grab link to help cops fight street crimes

July 5, 2017

The Philippine National Police’s Highway Patrol Group and Grab Philippines signed a memorandum of agreement to fight street crimes on Wednesday. Superintendent Oliver Tanseco, spokesman of the PNP-Highway Patrol Group (HPG), said:  "The objective of this memorandum of agreement is to promote collaboration between parties particularly in the areas of road safety and security and the prevention and reporting of crimes committed on major road and thoroughfare". Chief Superintendent Antonio Gardiola, HPG director said the idea of the collaboration is for intelligence and info gathering. "That is good intelligence for us because they move around they observe things daily so what we want to convert is the impression of the people when they feel afraid in these kinds of services",Gardiola said. He said HPG personnel will train Grab drivers on how to be "observant, suspicious and how to determine suspicious characters". Brian Cu, country head of Grab Philippines, said they have around 10,000 operational car units in several cities in the country and they will use 100 to 200 drivers to participate in the training with HPG. "When we introduced the idea to the members of Grab , all of them were happy and very excited but of course we will be choosing the creme dela creme as pilot group to train with the instructors of Grab", Cu said. He said Grab Philippines will allocate a budget to provide dash cams to drivers and they will sponsor the training with the HPG. Tanseco said the memorandum of agreement states Grab should provide P100,000 for assistance and in the improvement of the HPG Center for Road Security and Safety and to buy physical  training equipment that will be used in the training of drivers with HPG. The drivers should report criminal acts in streets that they observed through the HPG Text reporting system, he said. (Alanna Ambi/DMS)