With many customers in the hardware store, he had to wait to be served.
But PO2 Rico Caballero of the Fuente police station didn’t like to be kept waiting and allegedly threatened a 30-year-old store salesman in barangay San Nicolas, Cebu City, last Saturday morning.
Caballero got irked and reportedly grabbed the store clerk’s ID strung around his neck and whispered to him in Cebuano, “I’m from here. What do you want—a caliber .38 or .45 ?”
Salesman Jade Monisit of Atlantic Hardware Store told police he will file criminal and administrative charges against the policeman who entered the store to buy a lightbulb and demanded to be served.
Police said Monisit, who was unaware that he was talking to a policeman, told the customer to wait because he was attending to customers who had come earlier.
After accosting the store clerk, Caballero stormed out of the store without buying anything.
After he left, someone told Monisit that he just had a run-in with a policeman.
Monisit told police that he followed the man to the parking lot and confirmed his identity with the parking attendant.
Police said Caballero’s wife, who worked in a nearby establishment, later dropped by at the hardware store and urged Monisit to file charges against her husband.
“I don’t know the wife’s motive for doing that, and why she wanted me to file charges against her husband ,” Monisit said in Cebuano.
Senior Supt. Melvin Ramon Buenafe, chief of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO), ordered an investigation into the incident.
He tasked Chief Insp. Bonifacio Garciano to conduct the preliminary administrative investigation against Caballero.
Cebu Daily News tried but was unable to contact Caballero to get his side on the incident.