Supt. Marcos has already been punished, says IAS chief

Supt. Marvin Marcos

Supt. Marvin Wynn Marcos has already been punished for his role in the killing of Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. and detainee Raul Yap and has been cleared to return to active duty.

“The public might think that suspension for Marcos was too light a penalty, but we had to take into consideration several mitigating circumstances,” said lawyer Alfegar Triambulo, inspector general of the Philippine National Police’s Internal Affairs Service (IAS).

Triambulo said the fact that Marcos was not directly involved in the raid and that the incident was his first offense in 20 years of service over which he received several awards and citations called for a lower penalty.

“We recommended a four-month suspension for Marcos for command responsibility,” Triambulo said, adding that since Marcos had already served that penalty, he could already return to work.

But Marcos will still have to face the homicide charges filed against him before the Baybay City Regional Trial Court.

“[We recommended] demotion, a medium penalty, for his men who were inside Espinosa’s detention cell. The three [Police Officers 1] with them were dealt six-month suspensions,” the IAS inspector general said.

The IAS recommended demotion by one rank against nine of the policemen after witnesses at the Baybay subprovincial jail testified seeing “exchanges of signals” between them before Espinosa and Yap were killed in what was claimed to be a shootout.

“This showed there was a concerted effort among them,” Triambulo said.

But since PO1s cannot be demoted, they were instead slapped with a six-month suspension.

However, the policemen who actually took part in the operation are appealing the decision with the National Police Commission.

The other respondents in administrative cases of grave misconduct were exonerated because they had no direct participation in the raid.

They are SPO2 Alphinor Serrano Jr, of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group-8; as well as Chief Insp. Calixto Canillas Jr, Senior Insp. Lucrecito Candilosas,  SPO2 Antonio Docil, SPO1 Mark Christian Cadilo, PO2 John Ruel Ducolan and PO2 Jaime Bacsal, all from the Regional Maritime Unit (RMU)-8.

“Serrano was not on duty at the time so he was not part of the raiding team. The RMU men only acted as perimeter security,” he explained.