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BY RUBY SILUBRICO
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Thursday, June 15, 2017
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ILOILO City – Former municipal councilor Sandy Boy Salcedo Jr. denied dealing prohibited drugs and suggested that he may have been framed. have been framed.
Salcedo was arrested in an entrapment operation on Tuesday in Barangay Ungka 2, Pavia town, where he was residing.
He is a Level 2 high-value target, according to the police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).
That is not true, Salcedo stressed.
“I have legal businesses,” he said. “I’m a fish broker and I have a lending business. I will not engage in any illegal business.”
The 44-year-old Salcedo was a Sangguniang Bayan (SB) member of Concepcion, Iloilo for three years. He ran for mayor last year but lost to Mayor Millard Villanueva.
He is a son of the late Concepcion mayor Elizabeth “Betsy” Salcedo.
While he denied selling drugs, Salcedo admitted he was once a drug user. It was back in his college days, and he already stopped, he stressed.
Five grams of shabu worth P42,000 were seized from him.
These were on top of the plastic pack of shabu he allegedly sold to an undercover police officer around 3:45 p.m. on Tuesday.
Salcedo also refuted the authorities’ narrative.
He claimed that he was at a bus terminal in Pavia when a PDEA agent invited him to the municipal police station.
“When we reached the police station, they showed me plastic packs of shabu,” he said. “I don’t own them. I don’t sell drugs.”
His denials were not enough to stop the PDEA from filing cases against Salcedo yesterday at the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office.
He was charged with violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, specifically Section 5 (Sale, Trading, Administration, Dispensation, Delivery, Distribution and Transportation of Dangerous Drugs and/or Controlled Precursors and Essential Chemicals).
Chief Inspector Jonathan Pinuela, Pavia police chief, said Salcedo’s involvement in the drug trade dates back to his days as municipal councilor.
This was why Salcedo was classified a Level 2 high-value target, Pinuela said.
“I’ve been targeting him (Salcedo) since last year when I was the Concepcion police chief,” said the police officer.
Salcedo remains incarcerated at the PDEA Region 6 detention facility as of press time.
Someone can be classified a Level 2 high-value target (HVT) if they distribute huge volumes of prohibited drugs to street-level dealers, police said.
Level 3 HVTs are drug lords/financiers, while Level 1 HVTs include barangay officials engaged in the drug trade and/or have ignored the proliferation of drugs in their villages, said the police./PN
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