Cabaero: On ‘ninja’ cops
CEBU City Councilor Antonio Cuenco wants to put a stop to the recycling of seized drugs by rogue cops.
Those confiscated drugs are either used to plant as evidence on another suspect to boost police accomplishment records in the fight against illegal drugs or traded back into the market. Those are the suspicions.
What Cuenco is doing is localizing the call of President Rodrigo Duterte for an investigation into “ninja” cops or those who recycle or trade confiscated drugs. What Cuenco should prepare himself for is the difficult task of seeking the truth from these suspicions.
This is where his questioning and cross-examination skills may come in handy as it was Cuenco who led in 2006 the House of Representatives inquiry into the Cebu drug mess. Cuenco was Cebu City south district congressman then, and he held the post of chairman of the House committee on dangerous drugs. He was also the primary author of Republic Act 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.
That experience should make him the best person within the Cebu City Council to call to investigate the local campaign against illegal drugs.
It took an official statement by Duterte to bring out to the public what has been bandied about—that the illegal drugs confiscated in police operations are being recycled or traded.
Cuenco wants to open the discussion at the local level with Cebu seeing a seemingly endless stream of kilos of shabu confiscated and men and women in the trade arrested. With all those drugs confiscated, said to be running in the millions of pesos, shouldn’t the market now be low in supply?
The Police Regional Office (PRO) 7 seized P1.2 billion worth of illegal drugs from July 1, 2018 to July 1, 2019, with the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) having the largest haul of 89.916 kilos of illegal drugs worth P681,479,930 or more than half of the total in the region.
But an investigation into where the confiscated drugs go could face a confusing mix of admission and denial. It was Duterte who said these “ninja” cops exist, as he also warned they would “die first” should they continue with the practice.
Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief General Oscar Albayalde at first admitted these cops do exist but later said they are a “thing of the past.” That organized group of police scalawags has been disbanded, he reportedly said.
In Cebu, after Cuenco’s call for an inventory of confiscated drugs, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and PNP said they have nothing to hide and there are no such “ninja” cops here. CCPO Director Gemma Vinluan wants police personnel to stitch the pockets of their uniforms to dispel doubts.
Cuenco wants to know where confiscated drugs go and how they are disposed. He might as well ask also where and how such investigations end. Hopefully, in transparent police action.