La Loma cops get another blackeye over 2011 case

PNP Director General Alan Purisima. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Philippine National Police chief Director General Alan Purisima has recommended the dismissal from the service of five Quezon City policemen assigned to the La Loma station over a 2011 administrative case.

They include two officers who were tagged in the Sept. 1 Edsa robbery-abduction.

Purisima has signed a draft decision of the National Police Commission (Napolcom) dismissing SPO1 Ramil Hachero, PO3s Eugene Lim and Ernesto Corpuz Jr., PO2 Jonathan Rodriguez and PO1 Erwin Bautista. The decision, however, still awaits the signatures of Napolcom chair and Interior Secretary Manuel “Mar” Roxas II, and vice chair Eduardo Escueta for final approval.

Hachero and Rodriguez were among the eight Quezon City policemen being linked to the Edsa “hulidap” incident in which the two employees of a Mindanao-based engineering contractor allegedly lost P2 million and were detained without charges at the La Loma police station for seven hours.

The Napolcom ruling was in connection with a 2011 administrative case where the five officers were accused of illegally arresting two Quezon City residents for drug possession on April 9, 2011, as part of their extortion racket.

According to case records, the complainants, both residents of Barangay (village) Paang Bundok, were in a car waiting for the green light at the intersection of Don Manuel and Baco Streets in La Loma when they were accosted by the police.

The officers allegedly caught their victims carrying packets of “shabu” and demanded P10,000 for their release. Like in the Edsa hulidap case, the victims were brought to the La Loma station, where the evidence against them was supposedly “planted.”

A relative of one of the victims produced the money later and the two were freed. They later filed a complaint in the Napolcom.