ILOILO City – To sustain their illegal business without getting caught despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, drug traffickers are getting creative.
They are using “new faces” or personalities not familiar to the police, according to Police Lieutenant Colonel Joem Malong, spokesperson of the Police Regional Office 6 (PRO-6).
To further avoid interception, they use courier services to deliver supplies, revealed Malong.
“That’s why we are intensifying our monitoring. Security measures in local ports have also been tightened,” she added.
Despite restrictions due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) health crisis, anti-drug operations in Region 6 remain relentless, Malong assured Western Visayans.
The police netted 1,996 drug personalities between March 2020 and March 2021, according to Malong.
Within that period, 1,532 drug operations were conducted, resulting to the confiscation of P16,010.272 grams of suspected shabu valued at around P109.1 million, and P2.7 million worth of marijuana, PRO-6 data showed.
One year into the pandemic, the Negros Occidental Police Provincial Office (NOCPPO) had the most number of drug personalities arrested at 857; followed by the Bacolod City Police Office (BCPO) with 514; and the Iloilo City Police Office (ICPO) with 207.
As to the ICPO’s figure, Malong said “we are slowly regaining the glory and peace for Iloilo City that was once tagged as the most ‘shabulized’ and ‘bedrock’ of illegal drugs.”
Malong, however, admitted that despite strict border security and checkpoints, illegal drugs still proliferate.
“For a while, drug traffickers kept their supplies in safe houses,” Malong added.
On March 19, shabu worth about P13.6 million was confiscated from two suspects in a buy-bust operation in Barangay Lag-asan, Bago City, Negros Occidental.
According to Police Lieutenant Glenn Soliman, team leader of PRO-6’s Drug Enforcement Unit in Bago City, the motorcycle-riding suspects delivered six sachets of the prohibited substance to an undercover police officer for P100,000.
When further inspected, the two yielded around two kilograms of shabu.
Soliman said the two were street-level drug targets.
The suspects, meanwhile, claimed they were only ordered by their “boss” in Silay City to do the “deliveries.”
They also insisted it was just their second time to deliver shabu./PN
