Loot: Shoot me if it’s proven I visited Kerwin

Former police general and now Daanbantayan Mayor Vicente Loot of Cebu. (FILE PHOTO, CEBU DAILY NEWS)

Tired and seemingly pushed to the wall, retired Chief Supt. Vicente Loot on Thursday said  he was willing to be publicly executed if it could be proven that he visited Kerwin Espinosa after the arrest of the alleged drug lord in May last year.

A Philippine National Police intelligence report said that Kerwin Espinosa was recruited as an informer in the antinarcotics campaign when Loot, 57, now mayor of Daanbantayan, Cebu province, headed the PNP office in Central Visayas.

The 36-year-old son of Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. of Albuera, Leyte province, later allegedly became involved in the illegal drug trade, rising to become a major dealer in “shabu” (methamphetamine hydrochloride) supplied from China that had raked in P300 million a month, according to the report, made available to the Inquirer.

Kerwin is at large and a shoot-on-sight order has been issued against him by PNP Director General Ronald dela Rosa.

“I will have myself shot publicly if anyone can prove that I was there when Kerwin was arrested,” Loot said in an interview with Radyo Inquirer.

Also named in the intelligence report dated May 31, which had been submitted to President Duterte, was retired PNP Deputy Director General Marcelo Garbo.

The Inquirer has attempted but has so far failed to get the comment of Garbo on the report.

Loot and Garbo are among five senior PNP officials accused by President Duterte of coddling drug lords.

The others, who are active in the service, are Chief Superintendents Bernardo Diaz, Joel Pagdilao and Edgardo Tinio. All have denied wrongdoing.

They are facing investigation by the National Police Commission (Napolcom).

A Napolcom investigative team has reported that there was sufficient evidence to pursue administrative charges against them.

Report confirmed

In an interview with reporters on Thursday, Dela Rosa confirmed he had the intelligence report linking Loot and Garbo to the purported “Kerwin Espinosa Drug Syndicate.”

“Even before there had been reports that the two are protecting drug syndicates,” Dela Rosa said.

In the Radyo Inquirer interview, Loot said that various intelligence reports had linked him to Kerwin since 2013.

“I know his name and I am aware of his links to the drug syndicates, but I do not know him personally,” Loot said.

Loot provided the Inquirer copies of documents and letters linking him to Kerwin, including one dated Sept. 9, 2013, from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group on the seizure of high-powered firearms.

The report by Supt. Benjamin H. Silo Jr. said Loot’s representatives and Winnie Codilla, a brother of then Ormoc City mayor, had intervened in the operation and claimed that the captured firearms belonged to Loot.

A month later, in a letter dated Oct. 7, 2013, then PNP Director General Alan Purisima cleared Loot of any involvement in the Espinosa syndicate.

On a complaint that Loot intervened in a raid against Kerwin in Albuera on June 11, 2013, Purisima said an investigation by the PNP internal affairs service had cleared Loot and that the case was “closed for lack of merit.”

 ‘One of his passions’

According to Loot, the fight against illegal drugs was one of his passions as a police officer, pointing out that from 2000 to 2001, he was even awarded “best regional officer” because of accomplishments in the antinarcotics campaign.

“I ran after the syndicate, I am not a protector,” Loot lamented. “I offered my life for the last 37 years and this is what I get in the end.”

Loot said classmates in the Philippine Military Academy were behind the campaign against him.

“Colleagues that I had helped and protected made this erroneous report,” he said, adding that he had tried several times to meet with President Duterte through Dela Rosa to clear himself but had so far failed.

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