BY RUBY P. SILUBRICO
ILOILO – No more friendly competition.
Drug dealers could be turning against rivals to take control of the lucrative local illegal drug market.
This is a possible fallout of the continuing campaign of the police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) against drug trafficking, said Senior Supt. Cornelio Salinas, director of the Iloilo Police Provincial Office (IPPO).
“We expect drug dealers to harm their competitors on suspicion that the latter are the ones informing us about their illegal activities. Abi nila may laglaganay kay madamo aton recovery sang drugs during our operations,” Salinas said.
The IPPO had already arrested 91 drug dealers since January.
Salinas said he was anticipating drug dealers to hire armed criminal elements or guns-for-hire to assassinate rivals in the illegal drug trade.
He thus ordered all police chiefs in the province to monitor the movements of criminal gangs employed by drug dealers to subdue competitors.
PDEA had said four drug trafficking syndicates operate in Western Visayas and three of these are in Iloilo – “Dragon”, “Buang” and “Bonjing.”
While the groups’ focus is Iloilo City, their massive operations also reach neighboring areas, even provinces outside Iloilo.
In a recent conference with his police chiefs, Salinas directed them to look closer at the whereabouts of guns-for-hire and other criminal gangs and their movements to preempt their activity.
The provincial director urged his men to maintain their non-stop operations against drug personalities with the support of municipal officials, especially the town mayors.
“The police could not solve this problem without the support of the community, municipal officials and other concerned agencies,” Salinas said.
Regional Director Paul Ledesma of PDEA also saw the possibility of drug dealers turning against their rivals.
They may suspect that their rivals were supplying the police and PDEA with information about their illegal activities, he said in a recent radio interview.
According to Ledesma, drug traffickers have started to feel the heat of their sustained anti-illegal drugs campaign.
He had noted a palpable change in the way the traffickers have been operating lately – they have started employing relatively unknown couriers or runners.
These are personalities not yet in the radar of PDEA, and so they felt confident of not getting caught, Ledesma said.
But some were not so lucky.
Ledesma cited as example arrested drug suspect Marvinito Cadiz who worked under the General Services Office of the Iloilo City government as a street sweeper and garbage collector. On May 28, he was arrested in a buy-bust operation and yielded 15.8 grams of shabu with a street value of P100,000.
Cadiz was unknown to PDEA until lately when an undercover agent managed to arrange a transaction for a planned buy-bust operation./PN
