Lacson links 5 mayors to drugs

At least five mayors outside Metro Manila are either drug lords or protectors of drug lords, incoming Sen. Panfilo Lacson said on Wednesday, citing police intelligence information.

Lacson said the list was given to him recently by police officers and that he was willing to share it with President Duterte, who last week announced he would soon publicly shame mayors and politicians involved in the illegal drug trade.

The president has previously named five Philippine National Police generals as drug coddlers, namely, retired police generals Vicente Loot and Marcelo Garbo Jr. and active officers, Director Joel Pagdilao and Chief Superintendents Bernardo Diaz and Edgardo Tinio. All have denied the allegations.

But Lacson, speaking at Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum,  declined to name the five mayors, only saying that some of them currently hold office and had been allegedly involved in the drug trade for a number of years now.

He said unnamed police officers told him of the alleged involvement when he went around the mayors’ area during the campaign season.

Lacson, a former PNP chief during the administration of ex-president Joseph Estrada, said the police officers sought guidance from him.

“Either the mayor is involved or police operations turned out negative,” after the mayors were tipped off about the operations, he said.

Lacson meanwhile said Chief Supt. Tinio went to see him last Monday to personally deny reports linking him to the drug trade. He said Tinio had “a lot of stories” that appeared believable.

Lacson said Tinio reminded him he had once granted the general a spot promotion for a successful encounter between his men and the communist New People’s Army.

Asked what stories Tinio relayed that made it believable he was not a drug lord protector, Lacson said that the general once declined a P5 million offer to drop charges against an arrested  big time drug trafficker in Bulacan.

Instead, Tinio told the prosecutor to help him instead entrap the judge, but nothing came of it and the judge was eventually dismissed in a similar case, according to Lacson.

“I told him to compile his records on this… to back your defense,” Lacson said.