From QC ‘kotong’ cop to trigger-happy QC squatter

A dismissed Quezon City policeman who in 2012 was caught extorting money from the son of Director Leonardo Espina, the officer in charge of the Philippine National Police (PNP), has again run afoul of the law.

Jose de la Peña was arrested by his former colleagues from the Quezon City Police District (QCPD) Thursday morning after he fired a gun to scare off a demolition crew sent by the local government to an informal settler community that includes his own house.

The gun he fired, however, was not recovered when the police came for him. He was booked for alarm and scandal and illegal discharge of firearms and remained in detention on Friday.

De la Peña landed in the news in September 2012 when he accosted a man for allegedly engaging in “phone sex” inside his car and asked him to cough up P20,000 to avoid arrest. The man turned out to be the son of Espina, then the director of the National Capital Region Police Office.

Later that month, Espina dismissed SPO4 De la Peña from the service for grave misconduct, not because of his son’s case, but in connection with the illegal search he conducted in 2009 in the car of a man who turned out to be the son of retired Army Gen. Celso Castro.

On Thursday, members of the QCPD’s City Hall detachment arrested De la Peña after he fired his gun to scare off a six-man team sent to demolish illegal structures, including his home, along Kalayaan Avenue in Barangay Malaya.

The police acted on the complaint of Voltaire Alcantara, district director of the Task Force Copriss (Control and Prevention of Illegal Structures and Squatting), who said the ex-policeman first had a heated argument with him before firing his gun.

The shot sent the Copriss crewmen fleeing and fearing for their lives, Alcantara said.