The Department of the Interior and Local Government is looking into the possibility that a powerful syndicate inside the police force was behind the P6.7 billion drug bust in Tondo, Manila eight months ago.
DILG secretary Benjamin Abalos Jr. said this group could be the reason investigators find it difficult to gather information and why no one was cooperating during the probe.
Abalos said this prompted him and then Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Rodolfo Azurin Jr. to call for courtesy resignations of police generals and colonels in January.
“I felt so frustrated, what’s happening here. What we should do after the resignation, we want to make sure to [let] them [know] that we’re serious. We will put you behind bars. That’s what we are doing right now. We are really house cleaning everything,” said Abalos in an interview with CNN Philippines.
While the graft charges and other criminal complaints against 50 police officials were already filed on Friday with the Office of the Ombudsman, Abalos said the National Police Commission and the PNP have yet to find answers on where the 990 kilos of shabu came from and who were the persons behind it.
The DILG chief said there is a need to take a radical approach versus illegal drugs by cleansing the PNP because it is unfair to the majority of the police officers who are putting their lives on the line everyday to combat illegal drugs while some of their bosses in the organization are behind the illegal drug trade.
On Tuesday, the DILG announced that 50 police officials were charged with graft and other criminal cases in connection with the alleged cover-up bid in the P6.7-billion drug bust in October last year.
The respondents were charged with violation of Republic Act (RA) 3019 or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act; RA 9165 or the Dangerous Drugs Act as amended; Revised Penal Code, in particular, Article 171 on falsification, Article 183 on perjury, Article 184 on false testimony and Article 217 for malversation of public property; and Presidential Decree No. 1829 or obstruction of justice.
Abalos, who also chairs the National Police Commission, said the filing of the cases stemmed from the investigation by the commission and the PNP’s Special Investigation Task Group (SITG) on the 990-kilograms shabu haul worth P6.7 billion confiscated in Manila last year.
Last April, Abalos made public a closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage showing police officers allegedly attempting to pilfer 42 kilograms of the seized 990 kilograms of shabu.
“Of these 50 respondents, 48 appeared on the CCTV video and an additional two officers have been charged on the basis of conspiracy,” he said.
Two of the 50 respondents were generals: Lt. Gen. Benjamin Santos Jr. and Brig. Gen. Narciso Domingo, Abalos said.
The DILG chief said they are optimistic about the results of the case, which aims to weed out the erring cops from the PNP and help clean the organization’s image.