Cavite PNP takes custody of police officer convicted of protecting shabu lab

CAMP VICENTE LIM, Laguna—The Cavite police has taken custody of Supt. Dionisio Borromeo, the second-highest police official in the province, who has been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for protecting an illegal-drug facility.

Senior Supt. Alexander Rafael, Cavite’s police director, said they received on Thursday morning a warrant for the arrest of Borromeo, his deputy provincial director for administration.

The warrant came from the Regional Trial Court in La Union, which, in a ruling promulgated Wednesday, found Borromeo and another policeman, PO3 Joey Abang, guilty of “protecting” a multi-million-peso shabu (methamphetamine hydrochloride) laboratory in Barangay Bimmotobot, Naguilian, La Union, while he was police chief of Dagupan City in 2008.

The court also ordered Borromeo to pay a P10-million fine. Abang was sentenced to 12 to 20 years in prison and to pay a fine of P500,000.

Rafael said Borromeo, who has been on sick leave since Monday, called him Wednesday when the court decision came out. “He told me, ‘Sir, I will turn myself in’,” Rafael said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

Asked if an arrest was made, Rafael answered: “He is now in our custody. We would commit him to the court maybe this afternoon. He’s just preparing some documents for his motions” for a reconsideration of the conviction.

Borromeo, a member of the Philippine Military Academy Class ’89, became visible in Cavite at the height of the investigation into the mass shooting in Kawit in January this year.

Rafael said he had worked previously with Borromeo, even before the La Union drug case in 2008, and observed in him a “changed man” over the years.

“I think that started when he became a Born Again Christian. We even called him ‘pastor,’ here,” Rafael said.

In reply to the INQUIRER’s queries, Borromeo sent religious text messages about discovering “God’s purpose (in) blessings sometimes disguised as trials.”

Asked if he was planning to appeal the conviction, Borromeo said he was “still praying for it.” He had pleaded “Not guilty.”