BY DOMINIQUE GABRIEL G. BAÑAGA
BACOLOD City – A “greyhound operation” thwarted a plan to escape by inmates from Police Station 8’s custodial facility here.
An inspection of the jail on Saturday afternoon discovered that the inmates were sawing the steel bars off the ceiling.
According to Police Major Joery Puerto, Police Station 8 commander, eight of the 16mm steel bars had already been removed.
The police station jail was built to accommodate 10 persons only. Currently, however, it has 25 inmates, most of them high-profile drug suspects.
To give additional room to the occupants, the police station allowed the inmates to use hammocks.
Puerto said the inmates could be using the nightly prayer vigil (6 p.m. to 9 p.m.) to drown out the noise generated by the sawing, and the hammocks offered additional cover to the inmates doing the sawing.
Puerto said a thorough search of the cells failed to recover any saw, although cops believed it was smuggled in by the prisoners’ visiting relatives.
In response to the escape attempt, the police station decided to temporarily suspend the visitations until further notice.
Relatives of the inmates will still be allowed to bring food, however, this must be surrendered to the desk officer and thoroughly inspected before being handed over to the prisoner.
The hammocks have also been removed from the cell./PN
