Recycled

Cops have been “recycling” confiscated illegal drugs even when I was a crime reporter fresh out of journalism school.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who has been a cop longer than I’ve been a journalist, surely knows this. So he probably just wants confirmation, straight from the (bickering) horses’ mouth, that the practice persists.

It’s doubtful that the Senate will ever get a complete and accurate picture of the extent of the problem. Or whether there is more recycling being perpetrated in the Philippine National Police (PNP) than in the office tasked by law to take the lead in the campaign against prohibited drugs, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.

PDEA Director General Aaron Aquino, who has lost most of his police security detail but is not about to lose his post, clarified to “The Chiefs” on Cignal TV’s One News last week that he didn’t mean it when he described as “rampant” the recycling of seized drugs in the PNP.

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon was the one who had used the word “rampant” when he asked about the extent of the drug recycling, Aquino told us. At a loss for the exact words to describe a complicated situation with a lot of imponderables, Aquino said he gave a simple answer: “Yes.”

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Aquino and Maj. Gen. Guillermo Eleazar, police director for Metro Manila, have met to discuss the problem. They shook hands at the One News studio.

But it’s plain to see that all is not well between the two agencies. PNP chief Gen. Oscar Albayalde has become touchy about the issue after being dragged into the recycling controversy by cop-turned-Baguio Mayor Benjamin Magalong.

The mayor has revived (or recycled, according to his critics) charges that led to Albayalde’s relief for command responsibility in 2014 when he was provincial police chief of Pampanga. At the Senate yesterday, Albayalde parried accusations that he had called Aquino in 2013 to intercede for 13 suspected “ninja” or rogue cops engaged in drug recycling under his command in Pampanga. Albayalde also denied being gifted with a Toyota Fortuner, saying he had only an old pick-up at the time.

As the case had already been investigated by Magalong when he headed the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, it looks like Albayalde survived the Senate face-off by the skin of his teeth. It helped that Aquino softened a bit on his story about Albayalde’s phone call. But the Senate grilling has tainted the PNP chief in the eyes of the public.

Albayalde had pulled out the 15 police escorts of Aquino – always a clear sign of PNP pique. Aquino, after a meeting with President Duterte, managed to hold on to four long-time close-in security aides. But the PNP says the cops’ deployment with the PDEA is temporary and at least two more will have to return to their mother agency for deployment in the Southeast Asian Games.

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The PNP has also set off to prove that the PDEA must look in its own backyard for ninja lawmen. Last Saturday, police arrested a PDEA agent and a purported agency asset in a raid in San Pedro, Laguna. The police reported confiscating from the agent 10 sachets of shabu as well as three guns, ammunition and a grenade.

Aquino has vowed to deal harshly with the agent, and any other PDEA member caught in illegal drug deals.

The PNP scored against the PDEA on that one. In this controversy, however, it’s still the PDEA that has the upper hand in the court of public opinion. One possible reason is that the campaign being conducted by PDEA has not been characterized by brutality and bloodshed. The agency is showing that the war on drugs can be waged with fewer killings.

The PDEA also had the upper hand at yesterday’s Senate hearing.

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To prevent recycling, the PDEA is also ahead of the PNP. The PDEA has a fortified, temperature-controlled evidence room at its headquarters, with multiple padlocks and surveillance cameras, and an eight-member guard contingent at any time. The room has two steel doors with biometric and facial recognition security features. Steel bars surround the room. Pilfering drug evidence from this room entails a lot of risk.

Much of the recycling in fact starts during the drug bust itself, when crooked law enforcers pilfer evidence seized, right at the site or in transit to the evidence rooms in their offices.

This pilferage can be prevented if there is an efficient way of keeping track of an unfolding operation and conducting an accurate inventory of what is seized.

Aquino told The Chiefs that the PDEA already has about 200 body cameras that are being used during anti-drug operations. A weighing scale is brought along during a drug bust, so that the amount of drugs found can be assessed on site before being transported to evidence rooms.

Eleazar told us that the use of body cameras is not yet SOP in PNP anti-drug operations, and the police teams don’t bring along weighing scales.

Non-police witnesses such as barangay personnel and even journalists are supposed to be present during drug busts. Aquino, however, said that because of concerns over personal safety, unarmed witnesses couldn’t tag along in the initial sweep. It is during this initial stage, he says, that illegal drugs can be pilfered by crooked lawmen.

To discourage this, Aquino is working for joint operations with the PNP. With more operatives who are unfamiliar with each other, he believes anti-narcotics agents will hesitate to pilfer drug evidence on site for recycling.

One thing good that might come out of this inter-agency feud is that the members will be watching each other – and catching “ninjas” in both offices.

Where there are crooked law enforcers, drug traffickers can’t be far behind.