Thursday, August 23, 2007 NBI arrests cop in payoff By Karlon N. Rama & Jovy S. Taghoy Sun.Star Staff Reporters
A CEBU City policeman was entrapped, disarmed and arrested for allegedly threatening a businessman with a non-bailable drug case unless he agreed to a P2-million payoff.
The entrapment of SPO1 Jaime Fabroa Otadoy was carried out by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) yesterday.
Otadoy was in plainclothes when he was taken to the NBI headquarters after his arrest inside Camp Sotero Cabahug on Gorordo Ave., where the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) and its special units are based.
Otadoy is with the CCPO special unit Vice Control Section (VCS).
Acting Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) Director Patrocinio Comendador immediately relieved Insp. Wilbert Parilla, VCS chief, after the incident and placed him on floating status.
Effective yesterday, Comendador said, the VCS was disbanded and the rest of the personnel assigned in the special unit will be absorbed by the Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Bureau.
Parilla, in a mobile phone interview, refused to make a statement.
Parilla stayed at the Drug Enforcement Unit office at the second level of the administration building of the CCPO but he did not talk to the media.
Another policeman, identified as PO2 Milo Arreola, also of the Vice Control Section and a member of the CCPO Shooting Team, was also taken into custody after he allegedly tried to intervene in the entrapment.
Arreola allegedly badgered an undercover NBI agent he had been suspicious of while the payoff was being made.
The ensuing commotion allowed Otadoy’s alleged cohort, PO1 Raniel Capangpangan to run away and slip past policemen sent by PNP Regional Office 7 Director Silverio Alarcio to assist in the arrest.
NBI 7 Chief Medardo de Lemos said the agency will charge Otadoy before the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas today. His two alleged cohorts—Capangpangan and PO1 Rey Albotra—will be charged at large.
It is not yet clear, though, if Arreola will be included because he was not mentioned in the complaint filed by the businessman.
But Otadoy denied the allegations in an interview at the NBI office.
He said businessman Ruel Lerio is in their surveillance list and that it was Lerio who offered to give them money when they pressed him for information regarding the criminal activities of his former associates in the drug trade.
Otadoy said Lerio has a criminal record and was once arrested for drug possession.
Lerio, in a separate interview, confirmed having a derogatory record but clarified that it was for drug use. He said he has since turned legit and his ventures include operating computer gaming arcades.
Lerio, 39, filed the complaint that resulted in the entrapment early yesterday afternoon.
In his affidavit, he narrated that Capangpangan and Albotra approached him around 4 p.m. last Tuesday, while he was at the Cebu Cathedral parking lot waiting for his son who was with a private tutor.
He said the two refused to let him leave until Otadoy, who they called by mobile phone, arrived.
Otadoy, in turn, showed him a pack of what appeared to be shabu and told him that they would use the drugs as evidence unless he gives in to their demand.
Lerio narrated that the policemen had him get inside his car and forced him to sit at the back with his son. They then drove to a vacant lot at the Cebu Business Park, behind the CCPO compound, where they waited for the end of office hours.
Lerio was taken to the VCS office around 5 p.m. and that it was there that the policemen asked him for P2 million.
He pleaded with the policemen and told them that he did not have that much cash. The policemen later agreed to P1.2 million.
Lerio said he called his wife and asked her to get ready the P200,000 he got from the sale of his car three days earlier. The money was brought to the VCS office by his nephew.
Lerio said he was released on condition that he comes up with the balance the following day.
“I was led outside the office where (Capangpangan) also handed to me the key of my multicab. I proceeded home only to realize how worried my wife and relatives were,” he said.
The policemen, he said, didn’t waste time in calling him for the balance, adding that he received a mobile phone text message from Capangpangan at 6:48 a.m.
“Upon advice of my family, we decided to bring the matter to the authorities,” he said.
Otadoy, when he was presented to the media at the NBI headquarters, reiterated his denial and said no payoff ever transpired.
“During our conversation at the cathedral, we only asked him for information. He said he can’t give up his friends so he is willing to pay us instead. I jokingly told him to pay half a million. He said the amount as too high. Then I told him to just give information instead,” he said in Cebuano.
In a separate interview, de Lemos said Lerio came to the NBI and signed an affidavit. The NBI then coordinated with Chief Supt. Alarcio and the entrapment was planned.
Comendador said that even when he was still at the Regional Intelligence and Investigation Division (R2) as the chief of the investigation section, the name of Otadoy was already in the watch list of suspected police personnel engaging in illegal activities.
He also received several reports about Arreola but these were “not specific.”
Comendador and Alarcio said the joint operation by R2 and the NBI 7 had their go signal.
Comendador said except for him, no other police official in CCPO knew about the operation.
As to why the entrapment was done at the CCPO, both Comendador and Alarcio said it was because it was the only place the operation could be done successfully.
“We don’t want to tolerate misdemeanors; we want to protect the good ones,” Alarcio said
Apart from criminal charges, the VCS police operatives will also face administrative investigation.
