Lucy builds new home for CIDG

ORMOC CITY, Philippines – Police Director Samuel Pagdilao Jr. of the Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Group was here last April 27 to inaugurate the building that Rep. Lucy Torres-Gomez funded from her Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) to provide a permanent home for the CIDG in the city. 

The new CIDG office is located at Camp Downes, where the police, the Army and allied agencies are based. The CIDG used to occupy a small room at the city’s Manpower Training Center but was told by the city government to vacate the place.

Pagdilao thanked Richard Gomez and Rep. Torres-Gomez for their support to the CIDG and for giving their unit here a “permanent home.”

He said the new office would boost the morale and performance of his men, who had to make do with their old cramped office-cum-quarters.

Also present during the inauguration were city police chief Elizar Egloso, CIDG regional chief Mage Bazar, Gomez, Army officers, men of the Highway Patrol Group and their wives. It was a short, no-fuss ceremony officiated by Fr. Danny Pongos.

Pagdilao said Chief Inspector Bernard Lao, his regional deputy director who was recently relieved from his post over unsubstantiated allegations, will be back in the region in no time. “He is one of our best cops,” Pagdilao said. “He has a spotless record and is known to be uncompromising.”

Pagdilao said this could be the reason why Lao became the object of a hatchet job because he refused to compromise his principles.

Some powerful backers of a known drug lord hereabouts that he had put behind bars were allegedly lobbying for him to drop the case. However, Lao would not give in.

PNP regional director Arnold Revilla, in an investigation report sent to Philippine National Police chief Director General Nicanor Bartolome and Interior and Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo, debunked the accusations against Lao and four other policemen relieved along with him.

Revilla also categorically stated in his report that they traced the damaging text message that led to Lao’s relief to a “political rival” of Torres-Gomez.

Revilla said the allegations against Lao and three of the four policemen were unfounded, adding they were known to be in the “forefront of the anti-illegal drug campaign in Ormoc City and neighboring municipalities.”

Revilla, however, did not clear the fourth policeman who was named in a sworn affidavit of a suspected drug pusher as a “frequent visitor” in his house and did nothing when another suspected drug pusher to whom he owed money shot him several times.