SHABU OR TAWAS?: The Quezon City Police District has launched an investigation of a drug recycling racket by rogue cops. This involves replacing seized shabu with alum so the drugs could be re-sold in the streets. (INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/GRIG MONTEGRANDE)
MANILA — A plastic bag containing 26.9 grams of tawas (alum) was found in the office of a slain Quezon City police official suspected of recycling drugs.
A report from the Quezon City Police District (QCPD) said that the tawas—earlier mistaken for “shabu” or methamphetamine hydrochloride—and a weighing scale were found in a cabinet owned by Senior Insp. Ramon Castillo.
The police official was assigned to the QCPD District Anti-Illegal Drugs (DAID) based in Camp Karingal before he was gunned down in an entrapment operation carried out by other policemen last week. According to authorities, Castillo resisted arrest and drew his firearm, triggering a shootout.
The resealable bag which contained the alum was marked “2-10-16,” indicating the date the shabu it originally contained, was seized as evidence.
The QCPD head, Senior Supt. Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar, told reporters on Wednesday that narcotics operatives were not supposed to have weighing scales and plastic bags containing questionable substances in their possession.
Protocol dictates that DAID personnel submit all evidence recovered in operations to the Crime Laboratory at Camp Crame, according to Eleazar.
The discovery was made a few days after three kilos of tawas were found in one of the lockers of 35 relieved DAID policemen in Camp Karingal last week.
Eleazar said the alum was recovered while the District Personnel and Human Resource Development Division was cleaning out the DAID barracks following the policemen’s transfer to the District Headquarters Support Unit, also in Camp Karingal.
Authorities earlier indicated that the quantity of the recovered alum seemed to back rumors that some of the relieved DAID policemen might be involved in drug recycling, substituting the tawas for the drugs seized in legitimate operations. SFM/rga