Crime prevention and control is the main task assigned to every law enforcement agency particularly the police force. The Philippine National Police, as the front liner in implementing the law, needs a well-equipped and modern facilities, technology and capable officers to man its Tactical Operation Center. It is much required to the PNP organization to have an established command center to support its operation in terms of monitoring the activities and operation of the organization, transmitting-receiving information pertinent to police operations, maintaining peace and order, and other related activities/task mandated by the local and national government units and the private sector.
In this paper, the researcher aimed to assess the operational capability of the Cavite Police Tactical Operation Center in terms of its operational capability on the aspect of personnel capability, logistics and financial support, strategic capability and the community support. These factors are considered significant on the operation of the TOC and it may have an impact on the efficiency of the police force in enforcing crime prevention and control.
The study is also classified as descriptive type of research utilizing quantitative technique to identify the assessment of the different groups of research participants who are the TOCs officers, patrol officers, LGUs and NGOs, Barangay Officials and the members of the community. And to support the statistical result of the research, qualitative technique was employed through the narration of observed practices and identified strength and weakness of TOCs sustained by information that were gathered from the interviews of selected research participants. The result of the study will be employed to further enhance the capability of the Cavite Tactical Operation Center through the designed Action Plan to address the needs in terms of personnel capability, logistics and financial support, strategies implemented and to strengthen the community participation and support.
There are three (3) sections in this study, first is to assess the current status of the capability of TOC, second is to identify the problems and its causes and the third one is to propose solutions to identify its level of relevance to resolve matters concerning the enhance of the Operational Capability of Cavite’s Tactical Operation Center. It is evident that the TOC of the Cavite Police is capable in performing its duties and responsibilities base on the assessment of the respondents. This is supported by the recorded crime statistics that it was observed there is a decrease on crime volume and crime rate.
This is significant on the effort exerted by the Cavite Police particularly on the aspect on the dissemination of information related to peace and order monitoring, crime prevention and control. The study concluded that there is a serious problem on the qualifications of police personnel assigned in TOCs because of lack of training and experience on the said position. However, there are also lapses on the support of the national and local government to upgrade the equipment of the police force for their communication system. The Philippine National Police cannot be solely blamed with the occurrence of crime in the community for the reason that there are also members of the community that do not show interest and participate in the campaign against criminality. Therefore, it can be concluded, that the three groups of respondents recognize and highly recommend the enumerated proposed measures to address the concern and problem of TOCs. They affirmed on their assessment that each group of respondents have a vital role on maintaining the peace and order in the community specifically on the information gathering and reporting. Furthermore, there is a significant difference on the assessment of the three groups of respondents in terms of the operational capability, problems encountered and proposed measured for the Cavite’s Tactical Operation Center. Thus, the null hypothesis is rejected. The researcher designed a proposed action plan address the identified needs of the Cavite’s Tactical Operation Center.