Cop slain in Pasig a ‘workaholic,’ cited for big arrests

Rommel Macatlang—PHOTO BY JODEE A. AGONCILLO

The ranking police official who was killed in an ambush in Pasig City early Tuesday morning was considered a “workaholic” by colleagues and had received awards and citations for the success of several anticrime operations.

Chief Insp. Rommel Macatlang, 52, worked against drug trafficking syndicates in Eastern Metro Manila, including the Exsano group in Taytay, Rizal, whose members were arrested in 2016.

In 2015, Macatlang was one of the 12 recipients of the Philippine National Police Merit Medal for the arrest of Shabbir Valdez Ponferrada, the prime suspect in the series of car theft, robbery-hold-up and rape incidents wherein the perpetrators used taxi cabs to find victims.

He was also one of the lawmen who foiled an attempt by a former Mandaluyong City narcotics officer to extort money from a vintage car owner in 2010, the Inquirer learned.

SPO1 Leon Guerrero, who worked with Macatlang when the latter was still under the Eastern Police District (EPD), remembered him as a “brave, dedicated and hardworking” superior. “He sleeps here at the office almost every day for work.”

Another EPD colleague who had known Macatlang since 2006 described him as “very workaholic” and “a decorated cop who earned awards citations.”

Macatlang was a former chief of the EPD’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG). He was reporting to the National Capital Region-CIDG at the time of his death.

Coming from another officer’s birthday party at Camp Crame, he was in civilian clothes and driving his white Mitsubishi van when shot by motorbike-riding assailants in a Shell station at the corner of Ortigas and Meralco avenues, where he stopped to refuel around 12:30 a.m. on Tuesday.

He sustained two gunshot wounds in the head and body and was declared dead on the spot by responders from the Pasig Rescue Team. Four bullet casings were recovered from the scene.

The EPD director, Chief Supt. Romulo Sapitula, formed a special task force to speed up the investigation, led by Senior Supt Marcelino Pedrozo, the district deputy chief for operations.

Macatlang’s family, who will be bringing his body to Los Banos, Laguna, deferred issuing a statement on his death.