SHE was the handpicked successor of Royina Garma, who retired as director of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) to become general manager at the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office.
The two were classmates in Class 1997 of the police academy.
Then incoming mayor Edgardo Labella also recommended her for the post after reading her curriculum vitae. Apparently, he was impressed by her accomplishments in her previous assignment as former chief of the Women and Children Protection Center in Luzon. She also had not been linked to any “summary killings.”
“The lady has balls,” Labella had said, later praising her “for speaking her mind clearly without fear of offending anyone.” By all accounts, everything was coming up roses for P/Col. Gemma Vinluan here in her new home of Cebu City.
That all changed after the fatal ambush of Clarin, Misamis Occidental Mayor David Navarro last Oct. 25, 2019.
A day after Navarro was arrested for punching a masseur and allegedly asking a female massage therapist to give him a handjob, he was shot dead in broad daylight on his way to his inquest proceeding at the Cebu City Prosecutor’s Office.
He was accompanied by family and friends and escorted by personnel of the Abellana Police Station when the incident happened.
On Oct. 28, President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the Philippine National Police to drop its investigation after asking the National Bureau of Investigation to take over, saying he wanted to ensure “fair” findings on the case.
Two days later, Vinluan found herself transferred to the Regional Personnel Holding Administration Unit until further notice, pending the investigation on Navarro’s death.
Several controversial killings happened under her predecessor’s watch, but Garma was never relieved.
Not after the massacre of five men in Barangay Malubog and the murders of Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency officer Baby “Earl” Rallos, former Cebu City assistant prosecutor Mary Ann Castro and P/Capt. Delfin Bontuyan, a former Criminal Investigation and Detection Group 7 officer. Not even after four-year-old Bladen Skyler Abatayo was killed by Carbon Police Station operatives during a drug bust in July 2018.
So what makes the death of Navarro, who was on Duterte’s narco-list and was tagged as the alleged leader of the Alferez Robbery Group, so special that it would temporarily cost Vinluan her post as CCPO director?