Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Gen. Guillermo Eleazar. Senate (File photo by JOSEPH VIDAL / Senate Public Relations and Information Bureau)
MANILA, Philippines — Two drug suspects who have reportedly done illegal drug transactions with inmates of the Cebu City Jail are now being investigated by the Philippine National Police (PNP), its chief Gen. Guillermo Eleazar assured on Wednesday.
Eleazar said he had directed the director of the Central Visayas Police Regional Office (PRO 7) to investigate and identify who might be involved in the scheme.
According to Eleazar, the suspects — Benjie Lupian and Bryan Osabel — admitted having dealt with inmates of the jail.
Lupian was caught in Barangay Duljo Fatima in a buy-bust operation carrying over 1 kilogram of crystal meth, more commonly known locally shabu, worth around P7 million.
Osabel was caught in another buy-bust carrying 501 grams of shabu with an estimated value of P3 million.
“The involvement of jailed drug traffickers in the illegal drug transactions only proves how big the country’s drug problem is, with syndicates deeply embedded in our country,” Eleazar said in Filipino.
“I have assigned the RD [regional director] of PRO 7 to thoroughly investigate this issue. If true, we need to pinpoint those who are involved so we can end the operations of this syndicate,” he added.
Eleazar stressed that it was not the first time that drug suspects sourced illegal drugs from prisons, citing the example of shabu being produced at the New Bilibid Prison by convicted drug traffickers.
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Eleazar said that several agencies in the past had implemented coordinated measures to rid detention facilities of illegal drugs.
Despite the prevalence of such schemes, Eleazar assured that the government had been doing everything it could to stop them.
“The government is not helpless in this modus as proven when we were able to dismantle the communication network of convicted drug traffickers at the New Bilibid Prison,” he said.
That was done, he said, when he was still chief of the National Capital Region Police Office through “a strong coordination” with several agencies — PNP, Bureau of Corrections, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, and National Bureau of Investigation.
“That is why I am ordering our commanders to strengthen the coordination with these agencies to include the BJMP [Bureau of Jail Management and Penology] through intelligence-sharing in order to deny inmates from running the illegal drugs operations,” he added.
Eleazar said that resolving the incident would help erase doubts about inmates and jail wardens conniving to support the drug trade.
“The repetitiveness of these incidents only put suspicion of connivance in this modus. So I expect all our commanders to do something about this in the soonest possible time in order to do away with these doubts and speculations,” he said.