Reformed pusher, up for award, nabbed by cops

BALER, Aurora, Philippines – In July, he submitted himself to the government’s Oplan Tokhang and signed a waiver that he would reform. In Bahay Pagbabago, a reformation center for drug pushers and addicts, he excelled in class.

But on Saturday, the supposed reformed drug pusher was arrested by police in San Luis town, reportedly for backsliding and going back to his old ways of selling illegal drugs.

Senior Insp. Ysrael Namoro, San Luis police chief, identified the arrested recidivist pusher as Elmer Gutierrez of Barangay Real, San Luis.

Gutierrez was collared in a drug sting conducted by police and provincial intelligence operatives last Saturday, the very day he was supposed to receive an award for being the second most brilliant in the class of reformists at the rehabilitation center.

He yielded the shabu that he sold to a policeman who posed as buyer, using P1,000 in marked money.

“Actually, Gutierrez is scheduled to receive an award but he is just like an actor who misled us,” Namoro said.

Namoro said Gutierrez was a big letdown, considering lawmen had high expectations that he would be permanently weaned from illegal drugs.

After all, he recalled, the suspect signed a waiver to stop his involvement in illegal drugs after he was tagged number three among the targeted drug personalities in San Luis in a watch list of the Philippine National Police (PNP).

He said surrenderees in the PNP’s watch list could be merely putting up a front in signing waivers to make it appear they had changed when implementors of Oplan Tokhang came.

But old habits apparently die hard, he noted.

“When we got wind of reports Gutierrez was back selling shabu, we put him under surveillance and set up the entrapment,” Namoro said.