Caloocan precinct chief, cop relieved, face raps for watching basketball during jail break

MANILA, Philippines — A Caloocan City Police precinct commander and his desk officer were relieved of their posts on Tuesday for gross negligence in the performance of duty that led to the escape of four of their seven detainees on Saturday evening.

On Tuesday morning, Senior Superintendent Bartolome Bustamante, the Caloocan Police chief, relieved Chief Inspector Avelino Protacio II, commander of the Caloocan Police Community Precinct 6 in Camarin, Caloocan City, for “command responsibility” or “failure to supervise subordinates” pending investigation.  Administrative charges will also be filed against Protacio.

His duty desk officer, SPO1 Wilfredo Barrios, would face a criminal charge for “infidelity in the custody of detainees” — a crime against the state —  and administrative charges for abandoning his post, failing to conduct ocular inspection and headcount every two hours and not properly implementing the visiting hours, Bustamante said.

Bustamante vowed to hold a “full-blown” investigation to determine Barrios’ and Protacio’s extent of liability. Bustamante ordered the immediate transfer of the three remaining prisoners and the three rearrested fugitives from the detention cell in Camarin to the Calooocan City Jail-North Extension Office.

As of this posting, three of the four escapees were already rearrested though an exhaustive manhunt by the Caloocan police. Those arrested were identified as robbery and holdup suspects Danilo Badoso, 21, and 18-year-old Ryan Vicente Modesto; and 44-year old Raymundo Abalantac, who was detained for violation of the Batas Pambansa 6 or the law against the illegal possession of a deadly weapon.

Leonardo Manila, 32, also a violator of BP 6, is still at large. All four fugitives are waiting for their commitment orders before they are transferred to the Caloocan Bureau of Jail Management and Penology.

Investigations showed that the detainees sawed off the upper portion of the front iron grills of their detention cell, using an improvised steel saw. They then passed through the station’s back gate around 10:30 p.m. Saturday after the scheduled cell inspection, Bustamante said.

The police are determining how the steel saw was smuggled into the detention cell, according to Bustamante.

Barrios has admitted watching a basketball game several meters away from the 3 x 5-meter-detention cell, when the detainees escaped, Bustamante said.

Protacio, a stay-in at the community precinct, told Bustamante that he woke up around 3 a.m. on  Sunday and discovered that the desk officer was not at his post, and found out a female visitor at the cell. But he did not learn of the escape until the next cell inspection, Protacio said.

Bustamante said they were still looking into escapee Modesto’s allegations—sent through a text message after their escape—that implicated Senior Police Officer 2 Edgardo Meriales as an accessory to the crime. In the alleged text message sent to Protacio, Modesto claimed that Meriales facilitated the escape but told the fugitives to do it when Barrios was on duty.

“The text message may try to mislead the investigators or create a feud among my people. But we will still look into that angle,” Bustamante said.

Bustamante also denied allegations that the detainees paid the jail officer P200,000 since the fugitives “cannot even pay for their bail,” which amounted to P2,000 for BP 6 and P100,000 for robbery.  SFM