POLICEMEN caught in CCTV footage planting drugs in an office raided last year have been sent to barracks and will face investigation and possible administrative charges that could include their dismissal from service, a top police official said Friday.
Director Oscar Albayalde, chief of the National Capital Region Police Office said they have already identified the policemen, who was led by a chief inspector, who barged into a business establishment in October 2016.
Albayalde declined to divulge the identities of the policemen pending investigation against them.
At the Senate hearing on the killing of South Korean trader Jee Ick Joo, Senator Panfilo Lacson, committee chairman of the committee on public order and illegal drugs provided a video showing a policeman sporting a cap and backpack planting shabu inside the cabinet drawers inside the office before the raid took place.
Lacson said the raiders also robbed the office of equipment worth P7 million while demanding another P2 million during the raid.
Albayalde declined to provide details except to say that the policemen were based in Metro Manila.
Revelations that police had kidnapped then strangled Jee inside police headquarters in Camp Crame have sparked public outrage and have cast doubts on the wisdom of President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs.
Albayalde urged the public to report abuses by the police.
“The NCRPO has a no tolerance policy on erring cops. The NCRPO has no place for bad eggs,” he said.
The NCRPO announced on Friday it has dismissed from the service 46 policemen, suspended 63 and demoted four others since July last year for their involvement in various illegal activities.
The video clips of the police planting evidence and robbing an office came as a surprise to the Palace, which said it would not allow the rogue cops to go unpunished.
Despite the flak the PNP is taking, Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella said the President still supports police who carry out his orders.
“In a sense, it’s a surprise that we discovered these things. But definitely, this is in alignment with the President’s efforts to deal with crime and corruption, especially within government,” Abella said in a Palace press briefing.
During Thursday’s hearing of the Senate committee on public order and illegal drugs, Lacson said that extortion attempts were not isolated cases, contrary to the claims of Palace officials. With John Paolo Bencito