PHILIPPINE National Police (PNP) Chief Archie Gamboa has ordered the relief of the head of the Puerto Princesa City Police Office over his alleged involvement in the maltreatment of forest protection officers of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
Police Colonel Marion Balonglong had allegedly led the policemen who ordered DENR personnel and barangay watchmen of Barangay Matahimik-Bucana to lie face down at gunpoint on June 10, 2020. One was allegedly beaten.
“The allegations against Balonglong are serious and his relief is an administrative action to preclude any possibility of undue influence in the ongoing investigation,” Gamboa said in his instructions transmitted to Police Regional Office Mimaropa Regional Director Nicerio Obaob.
Obaob assured Gamboa that all allegations against Balonglong will be thoroughly investigated based on evidence and verified accounts of witnesses.
A police report said the DENR personnel were briefly detained at the PNP police station in Barangay San Pedro but were released hours later without any charges file against them.
In a statement, DENR Lawyers Guild Inc. said the DENR officers were investigating allegations of unlawful occupation and illegal cutting of mangrove trees in Sitio Bucana.
“Despite introducing themselves as employees of DENR and Puerto Princesa City Environmental and Natural Resources Office, the team was subjected to full body search, ordered to drop to the ground for 10 minutes, and one of them received blows and kicks and interrogated at a gunpoint,” it said.
The group condemned the incident as “the PNP is supposed to be the DENR’s partner in enforcing environmental laws and not its adversary or protector of violators of environmental laws.”
“As an organization of lawyers advocating environmental justice, this attack against our own DENR employees and environmental defenders should not be countenanced,” it said.
“We call on the PNP to investigate the matter and cleanse its ranks of police law-breakers, unfitting to implement the laws. Making these abusers of power within the PNP and other law enforcement agencies accountable and getting rid of misfits will reinforce the rule of law to all. No one is above the law,” it added. (SunStar Philippines)