The traffic chief of the Manila Police District (MPD) and three other policemen facing extortion cases have been removed from their posts as the city government started investigating them.
But Chief Supt. Joel Coronel, MPD director, refused to describe the relief of Supt. Lucile Faycho as punishment.
Coronel said Faycho was removed as head of the MPD-Traffic Enforcement Unit to pave the way for an “impartial and objective investigation.”
It was an “administrative remedy,” said Coronel.
“So it’s not a penalty,” said Coronel of Faycho’s relief for command responsibility.
In a statement, Coronel said the MPD would wait for results of the investigation ordered by Mayor Joseph Estrada and “if we find probable cause” to file charges against the policemen, “then that’s the time they will have to be transferred or reassigned permanently.”
Aside from Faycho, three other Manila policemen were being investigated for extortion—PO2 Joseph Buan, Chief Insp. Ramon Nazario and PO1 Raymund Gulapa.
Buan was arrested on July 28 in an entrapment operation.
He had been allegedly collecting P500 to P2,000 per week from bus companies Viofel, EPL and Yohan in exchange for allowing the bus companies’ units to use an illegal terminal in Lawton.
Buan was the third MPD traffic policeman arrested for extortion by the Philippine National Police Counter-Intelligence Task Force (CITF) since last month.
Nazario, head of a police precinct at the University Belt, was arrested by CITF agents on July 7 after an extortion complaint was filed against him by a group of vendors.
Gulapa was arrested on July 21 by members of the CITF for allegedly demanding P15,000 from an arrested drug suspect in exchange for booking the suspect on a lighter criminal case.
The cases involving the policemen, said Estrada, “undermines our efforts to professionalize our police force.”
“I want to know how and why this criminal activity had been tolerated and who are the people protecting it,” he said.