Police corruption

"Your move, Mr. President."

The Oct. 1 Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing presided by its chairman, Senator Richard Gordon, turned into a remarkable exchange of brickbats between and among ranking police officers, incumbent and retired.

Police corruption, when dealing with illegal drugs, was exposed. The corruption reaches the highest echelon of the 204,000-strong Philippine National Police. Corruption simmers down to the lower levels, down to the regional, provincial, city, district police units, especially the task forces against illegal drugs.

The Senate probe committee resumed its hearing yesterday. The senators tackled the overpricing of prisoner meals. There are 47,354 prisoners in the country’s eight largest prisons nationwide. About 30,246 of them are at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa. Imagine if you overprice their meals at P10 per meal, you make 300,000 per meal at NBP. Multiply that by three meals, you make almost P1 million—daily. The business beats being a congressman (P160-million pork barrel per year per congressman) and being a senator (P200-million pork barrel per year per senator). The budget for prisoner meal is P60. Actual charge of the caterer: P39.

So why did General Bato dela Rosa run for senator rather than stay at NBP as the chief? Love of country, maybe.

When the current PNP Chief Oscar Albayalde was the chief of police of Pampanga, on Nov. 29, 2013, a team of 13 anti-illegal drugs policemen led by Supt. Rodney Raymundo Baloyo IV conducted a buy-bust operation on a lair operated by a certain Johnson Lee, a Chinese, in a posh village in the province. They seized 200 kilos of shabu worth P800 million but surrendered only 38 kilos. Lee was set free after paying P50 million.

After that raid, several police officers, including Albayalde and Baloyo, acquired luxury vehicles, each costing P1.23 million. The missing 162 kilos of illegal drugs was worth P648 million, according to then-police Major Gen. Benjamin Magalong, now 59, then chief of the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, and now mayor of Baguio City.

In February 2014, Magalong said then PNP chief Alan Purisima asked him to investigate the November 2013 raid. Charges were filed.

Albayalde denied Magalong’s statement. “My car back in 2013 was ‘an old model’ of a pick-up truck,” the now PNP chief said.

For his part, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency chief Director General Aaron Aquino said Albayalde tried to intervene on behalf of 13 “ninja” cops in 2016. The then police chief of Central Luzon (Region 3) recommended the dismissal of the 13 police officers.

Until today, the key police officers in that questionable raid have yet to be dismissed from the service. They are still masquerading as crusading anti-drugs policemen, thanks to Albayalde.

Albayalde denied trying to "influence" the investigation. He also accused Magalong of being personal, meaning the latter has an ax to grind.

Magalong graduated magna cum laude from PMA in 1982. As a bemedaled police officer, he led the investigation into the botched 2015 Mamasapano massacre of 44 police special forces. In his report, Magalong found his commander-in-chief President Benigno Aquino III, his boss PNP chief Gen. Alan Purisima and and SAF Chief Getulio Napeñas indictable. The report marked him and he missed being the PNP chief for it.

At the end of the hearing on Oct. 1, Senator Christopher Lawrence T. Go, a close confidante of Rodrigo Duterte, hinted the President would take action as he was monitoring the hearings.

The Blue Ribbon hearings began early September 2019. So far, the Senate probe, under Gordon, has prevented the premature release of convicted rapist Antonio Sanchez, the notorious mayor of Calauan town, Laguna, and resulted in the ouster of former marine Captain Nicanor E. Faeldon as director general of the Bureau of Corrections.

Faeldon feigned ignorance about the impending release this year of Sanchez on the ground of “good conduct,” although he had signed a memorandum for his release. Faeldon also seemed unaware of the illicit drugs trade inside the sprawling prison compound.

The drug recycling scheme “agaw bato” was first exposed by Magalong at the Sept. 19 hearing. It is being perpetrated by what he calls “rogue elements of the PNP” engaged in “enterprise criminal mind.” Personalities involved in “agaw bato” transact with inmates of the NBP, Magalong said. As regards illegal drugs, he also disclosed that all roads led to the National Bilibid Prisons, meaning there are drug lords inside the penitentiary.

“In our investigation, all roads led to NBP. Chinese drug personalities, despite being detained inside the NBP, continue to remotely manage the drug trade in the country,” Magalong told the senators last Sept. 19.

Go said that despite the controversy, the PNP remains committed in reforming itself.

“In fairness to the PNP, it is continuing its internal cleansing program. Nangyari po ito sa nakaraang termino, hindi pa sa termino ni Pangulong Duterte. At nakita ko naman, napakaseryoso ni Pangulong Duterte sa kanyang ginagawa (This happened in the past administration, not during the term of President Duterte. And I have witnessed that President Duterte is serious in what he is doing),” Go said.

“The President fully trusts the police force. The war against illegal drugs and criminality will not succeed without the help of the policemen,” Go concluded.

Now, will Albayalde resign? “I will not resign,” he declared. Your move, sir, President Duterte.

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