Monday, July 02, 2007 Continuing review, monitoring of drug raps filed pushed
THE scare brought about by reports that some drug complaints at the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor cannot be accounted for will not happen again.
Regional State Prosecutor Antonio Arellano said his office will continue to monitor the inflow and outflow of drug complaints for inquest or for preliminary investigation lodged with the different agencies under his office.
He added that his assistant state prosecutors will continue to automatically review all drug complaints that get dismissed.
The Office of the Regional State Prosecutor exercises administrative and review authority over agencies under it such as the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor and the Office of the Cebu Provincial Prosecutor.
Appeal
Resolutions approved by City Prosecutor Nicolas Sellon and covering certain types of complaints, for example, may be appealed before it.
A newspaper earlier reported how over 40 drug-related complaints lodged before the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor could no longer be accounted for.
Used as basis in the report is a separate report prepared by Eli Espina, a City Hall employee detailed as a data encoder at the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor, for the Cebu City Dangerous Drugs Committee.
A column in the Espina report indicated cases whose “CBU numbers” could not be found. And when asked what it meant, he said these dockets could not be accounted for.
Personal reference
When sought to explain, Espina wrote Sellon and said the printed report, which was used as basis for the story, was a personal reference and not an official document.
Sellon, interviewed a day after the report came out, said a majority of the cases said to be missing were actually already in court.
The rest were either still under preliminary investigation or already dismissed for lack of probable cause, he added.
Still, the House committee on dangerous drugs has ordered an investigation.
Rep. Roque Ablan Jr., chairman of the committee, wrote Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez and sought an investigation.
He said this was not the first time he’d heard of anti-drug complaints getting lost at the level of prosecutors. (KNR)
