Cop, sister arrested in Taguig drug buy-bust

Gloria Santos and brother, PO1 John Santos were caught in a drug buy-bust by the Taguig City Police on Dec. 21, 2016. (Photo courtesy of the Taguig City Police’s Station Anti-Illegal Drugs)

MANILA — A police officer who failed a random police-wide test for illegal drugs and his sister were arrested in a drug buy-bust operation in their house in Taguig City on Wednesday.

Chief Insp. Jerry Amindalan, head of the Taguig City Police’s Station Anti-Illegal Drugs,  identified the suspects as PO1 John Santos, 39, assigned at Headquarters Support Service in Camp Crame, Quezon City, and his sister Gloria, 45.

The case investigator, SPO1 Ricky Ramos, said a poseur-buyer, SPO2 Jowel Briones, was able to buy a sachet of suspected methamphetamine hydrochloride, or shabu, worth P2,000 from Gloria inside the Santoses’ unit at the MRB Compound, near C-5 Service Road in Barangay Ususan, around 8 p.m. John, on the other hand, received the marked money from police.

Six other sachets of suspected shabu were also recovered inside the pouch of Gloria, a parking attendant.

Ramos said the Santoses had been under surveillance for a year and were confirmed by neighbors to be peddling illegal drugs in their compound.

PO1 Santos was previously assigned at Quezon City Police District’s Batasan police station.

In July, the QCPD director, Senior Supt. Guillermo Lorenzo Eleazar, named Santos as one of the four police officers who tested positive over weeks of random drug testing, as confirmed by later tests by the PNP Crime Lab.

Prior to their reassignment at Crame, they were placed under restrictive custody at the QCPD headquarters in Camp Karingal, where they had been divested of their service firearms.

Ramos said they were confirming reports that the police officer had other pending drug-related cases.

The Taguig police have also been investigating another sibling of the Santoses, a police officer at the PNP-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, if he had prior knowledge on the formers’ illegal drug activities.

The Santos siblings are currently detained at Taguig police jail pending inquest at the City Prosecutor’s Office for violation of Sections 5 and 11 of Republic Act No. 9165, or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act.  SFM/rga