Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon admitted that the “shabu” seized from a warehouse in Valenzuela City was opened by his men even before the arrival of antinarcotics agents.
Only the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) has the authority to open any suspected illegal drug shipment; that’s the law.
Faeldon said PDEA agents were late in coming to the scene.
But were they really?
Faeldon’s reason stinks to high heavens if we are to believe the PDEA agents who were sent to the raided warehouse.
The PDEA office in Quezon City was informed of the raid—which took place at 1 a.m. of July 26—at 10 a.m. or nine hours later, according to PDEA agents who arrived at the scene.
The agents made it to the warehouse at noon, after negotiating the horrible Metro Manila traffic.
And when they got there, all the five crates were already opened when the customs people could have pried open just one and left the four other crates for the “narcs” to inspect.
As a former police reporter, this columnist thinks the act of the customs raiding team reeks of rotten fish.
I’ve witnessed cops helping themselves to recovered loot when I was covering the police beat.
That’s a reality in law enforcement.
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The Senate should not waste its time conducting an investigation into the police operation on the house of Ozamiz City Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog Sr. that resulted in his death and that of 14 others, including his wife Susan and his brother Octavio, a provincial board member.
If it was a summary execution, so what?
Those people were lowlifes who—perhaps except for Susan—robbed banks, kidnapped for ransom, sold illegal drugs and killed their victims without mercy.
Mayor Parojinog especially tempted fate when he was overheard saying, “walang Duterte-Duterte dito sa Ozamiz (We don’t respect Duterte in Ozamiz).”
He challenged President Duterte, the No. 1 symbol of authority and another “hoodlum” (or who thinks like one), and got what he wished for.
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Anyone who was in Metro Manila in the 1990s would tell you that the Kuratong Baleleng gang, a creation of the Parojinogs, reigned supreme in the streets robbing banks and killing people who got in its way.
Ordinary cops were too scared of the Kuratong Baleleng and looked the other way as the gang robbed banks and their armored vans.
The gang members, composed of ex-soldiers or militiamen, used sophisticated weapons and were trained to fight.
They amassed billions of pesos robbing banks and kidnapping rich Chinese.
The gang also went into drugs and rice smuggling after a special group of law enforcers led by then Senior Supt. Panfilo Lacson allegedly massacred some of its members, gangland-style. (In 2013, the Supreme Court affirmed a 2003 Quezon City court ruling dismissing the multiple murder case against Lacson and the others accused in the alleged 1995 rubout.—Ed.)
That’s the reason Lacson, now a senator, is cool to the idea of investigating the death of Mayor Parojinog and his men.