On Duterte’s 1st week, Batangueño cops on the prowl vs drug suspects

BATANGAS CITY, Philippines (The Filipino Connection) - The first week of the Rodrigo Duterte presidency ended with provinces getting new provincial police directors and their localities’ police force becoming more visible in arresting drug users and pushers.

Batangas is an example of how the first week of President Duterte became a celebrated one nationwide for police’s vigilance against illegal drug actors.

The province welcomed Senior Superintendent Leopoldo Cabanag as Batangas’ police director. Cabanag even thinks Duterte’s campaign promise to curb the illegal drug trade in three-to-six months is “doable.”

This statement comes at the coattails of Batangueño law enforcers’ anti-drug operations that began on Duterte’s first day last July 1, three days before Cabanag was sworn in.

Batangas City’s fourth most wanted drug personality, Marco Castillo, was arrested on July 1 by virtue of a warrant of arrest for the previous case of violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act. They recovered from his possession a sachet of suspected shabu worth P660.

Seven of the ten most wanted drug personalities in Batangas City have already been arrested; with Castillo’s arrest, the list is down to three.

Just last July 4, the first Monday of the Duterte presidency and Cabanag’s first day into office, Tanauan City’s sixth most wanted drug personality Laureano Cabrera got killed in a buy-bust operation; this is after he allegedly engaged in a gun battle with authorities.

Seized from the suspect Cabrera were two sachets of suspected shabu and caliber 45 pistol.

Batangas City’s campaign against illegal drugs meanwhile led to the death of five suspects in separate police operations, namely Donald Medina, Erwin Bunquin and Dennis Atienza.

Just last July 5, father-and-son suspects Julian Carpio and Julian Carpio Jr. were also killed. Authorities said the suspects were killed in a gun battle with police officers after they retaliated in the course of the operation.

The elder Carpio was listed as the top illegal drug personality priority target in the province and was said to be a handler of gun-for-hire assassins operating in the province’s second district.

Local weekly newspaper Frontpage quoted Lemery Police Chief PCI Dwight Fonte as saying that 20 of 48 barangays in Lemery are now being monitored as a drug hotspot, with Barangay Maguihan topping the list.

Some arrested drug suspects have also confessed that they got their shabu from the Batangas provincial jail and the police is verifying the said information. Provincial Jail officials denied the allegations. Barangays Anak-Dagat and Maguihan in Lemery were included among the list of hotspots in Batangas province by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in 2013.

In Padre Garcia municipality, the local police put up a drop box where concerned citizens can write on paper the names of the drug pushers and users they know, subject for verification by the police. Surprise random drug tests were also conducted by the provincial crime lab to ensure that uniformed men in Batangas are not into drugs.

“Drugs cannot be stopped only when we do nothing about it, when we’re tolerating it…And I say to you eradicating drugs is doable,” Cabanag said in his speech at the Batangas police’s change of command speech in Camp Miguel Malvar on July 4.

Cabanag replaced Senior Superintendent Arcadio Ronquillo Jr., who served as Batangas police director for seven months ending June 30.

***

Marlon Alexander S. Luistro is the editor of The Filipino Connection, a regional partner of Philstar.com.