SCROLLING DOWN: What OTBT means and its effect on number of arrests and killings and volume of illegal drugs seized; why the PNP regional chief insisted on cleaning up toilets before cleansing PNP internally; how Sinas responds to Mayor Tomas Osmeña, other mayors; would he arrest journalists? "not as of now," he said, jokingly or not.
FIRST, the arrest that people are talking about: A married schoolteacher and her lover were found in a room of a lodging house in San Remigio, Cebu, and arrested by police on the complaint of her husband. The lovers were charged with adultery and concubinage.
That, and the news from India which says its top court struck down a 158-year-old law that punished a man who had sex with a married woman without the consent of her husband. It could be a cause for divorce but it's not a crime, the court said.
Under Philippine law, both the man and the woman are liable; the man commits the crime if he knew the woman was married. Concubinage is committed if it's done under scandalous circumstances.
Fed up with small-time
Police Central Visayas Chief Debold Sinas must have noticed when he assumed as regional director last June 4 the petty things in local police operations: small quantities of confiscated shabu (less than one gram), few arrests of suspects, and fewer people killed.
Who coined "OTBT" or one-time, big-time?
Last Tuesday (September 25), police killed seven crime suspects in Pajac, Lapu-Lapu City, the highest number of people gunned down in recent local history. Last August 3, three were killed in Talisay City, Mandaue City and Moalboal. Last July 18, just a few weeks after he started his assignment in the region, police killed six people: 3 in Talisay, two in Mandaue, and one in Carmen. On the same day, 721 grams, or P7.4 million worth of shabu and P3.4 million worth of marijuana plants were seized.
"Big haul" and "big kill" (which SunStar banner-headlined) must be what OTBT is all about.
'Internal cleansing'
General Sinas's mission or, as they love to call it, marching order from PNP Chief Oscar Albayalde was discipline and "internal cleansing" in the ranks of the police.
Would tightening discipline and "internal cleansing" include killing dirty cops? Nobody asked Sinas that question in the face. If there was, it wasn't reported, at least not prominently.
Only Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña suggested that the police were responsible for the killings in Cebu, which included as victims two PDEA employees and two or three cops, one of them from out of town.
Dirty toilets, cops
But before any of the big haul and big kill, you know what Sinas insisted must be done first?
Clean up the toilets (comfort rooms, CRs or restrooms) in all the 126 police stations throughout the region. The general must hate being inside a "pangit" CR "Particular ko anang CR," he said.
Note the priority: clean up dirty police toilets ahead of ridding police ranks of dirty cops and reducing illegal drugs supply on the streets.
Tomas, media
Finally, the general had his first chance of meeting with a cross-section of media, academe and civic leaders at the Cebu Citizens-Press Council (CCPC) meeting at Adnama last September 20.
Asked if he was investigating reporters allegedly being paid for signing inventory of drugs and other evidence seized during searches and arrests, Sinas said he found out that some of them indeed accepted money (from P1,000 to P1,500) even without being present during the search and arrest.
Are they safe from arrest? "As of now."
As to Mayor Tomas Osmeña who had criticized the police, the general said he had simply stopped responding to his statements or reaching out to the mayor. Why should I when I know how he'd react, Sinas said. Unlike with Tomas, he said he has no problem with the other mayors in Cebu.
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