CONGRESSMAN Romeo Acop concludes that the police officers who apprehended their colleague Sgt. Rodolfo Mayo during a buy-bust in Tondo last year did so pursuant to a “script.”
What were officially reported to be the circumstances surrounding the arrest are materially different from the events that truly transpired.
The arrest was declared to have been effected at around two o’clock in the morning of October 9, 2022. Video footage would show, however, that Mayo was under police custody at one o’clock in the afternoon of October 8, 2022.
The police officers who arrested Mayo are not the ones who signed the affidavit of arrest.
The question is whether this arrest can withstand judicial scrutiny given the glaring transgressions pointed out by the congressman.
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Was the criminal case against Mayo designed to fail? Is he getting protection from the very people who collared him?
Or is this shaping up to be a drug case without an offender? Intercepted contraband without anyone answering for it.
The police would constantly refer to a rule on presumptions – that official duty has been regularly performed.
The Tondo case, however, brings to light what a lot of people have been saying about police behavior during drug buy-busts – that they are staged after the suspects are abducted without the elements that are necessary for a valid warrantless arrest.
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Acop himself cites other examples uncovered in another investigation being conducted by the House of Representatives. The conduct of buy-bust operations by the police in Region IV-A has been concerning for ordinary folks who became victims of these abductions.
Acop is categorical in stating that policemen on the ground are committing crimes during anti-illegal drug operations to come up with accomplishments to report to their superiors.
A person must be in the act of committing an offense in the presence of a police officer before he may be apprehended without a warrant of arrest.
A mere suspect who appears on a drug list may not be arrested without a warrant for his arrest. He can be arrested without such a warrant in a buy-bust, i.e., he is caught selling drugs to an undercover operative.
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The police are making legal short-cuts by abducting a suspect who has not actually committed a crime in their presence. In the absence of an actual buy-bust, illegal drugs are planted in the suspect’s possession and the incident is reported as a valid warrantless arrest for drug trading.
Many have been arrested in this manner. You’d think small-time drug peddlers are galactically dense for always falling for the oldest trick in the world – a fake purchase by a total stranger.
Yet the police have not adjusted to certain realities. They employ the same old tricks. Sadly, many of these illegal arrests have earned validation from the prosecution service that continues to file court charges despite the invalidity of the buy-bust operation.
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Whether it is accomplishments for promotions or drug recycling, the anti-drug operations of the national police have been tainted by irregularities from top to bottom.
The positive news is that Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos has announced the filing of criminal and administrative charges against 50 police officers who were involved in the Tondo bust that yielded one ton of shabu.
This ought to be instructive to our courts of law that are hearing hundreds of drug cases that are clogging their dockets. Affidavits of arrest may not be taken at face value./PN
