FOR close to three hours on October 13 last year, Maria Victoria Perito said she and her eight-year-old son were driven around at night by police officers in a private vehicle as they tried to force her to come up with names of her supposed cohorts in distributing marijuana in Antipolo City.
Unable to give any information, she could only appeal to the lawmen for mercy but her supplications earned her nothing but pain.
“I was terrified when they made me go into their vehicle with my son. They told me to name my supposed boss and my companions but I couldn’t give any. I tried pleading for mercy but I got punched as they grabbed my hair. For every appeal for pity, I received a punch in the head,” he told a hearing conducted by the House committee on public order and dangerous drugs.
Perito recounted her story five months after her ordeal as the House panel started its investigation into allegations that some PNP officers have resorted to padding their performance figures through bogus arrests of alleged drug personalities.
The inquiry stemmed from House Resolution No. 776 filed by Antipolo City Rep. Romeo Acop, a former decorated police officer before resigning in 2001 with the rank of Chief Superintendent (brigadier general).
Acop called the sham buy-bust operations “an affront to the dignity of the police force” and blamed abusive lawmen for having “bastardized the noble profession of law enforcement.”
The police officers who were in attendance during the hearing insisted the arrests were done by the book.
Based on Perito’s statements, she was set up while walking her son home from school. An unidentified person asked her to pass on a sealed envelope to a man in a gray shirt and she complied without thinking.
After handing the envelope, she was suddenly accosted by cops and forced into an unmarked SUV together with her son and was driven around from two to three hours until she was told to alight at a darkened area.
There, she said her captors placed a tarpaulin beside her, stacked supposed marijuana bricks and a couple of P500 bills, declared her a drug pusher and took photos and video.
She was brought before a doctor for medical clearance but with one of the arresting officers glued to her side, she did not have a chance to tell the doctor to check her scalp for lumps and bruises.
“I was brought to a doctor who did not check me. The lumps and bruises from the punches were not visible because I had long hair. The next morning, I suffered pain and dizziness,” she told the committee.
Another alleged “high value” drug target arrested by the police, Christian Jonel Babagay, a college student, claimed he was picked up and loaded into a waiting vehicle while returning a Bluetooth speaker to a friend at the latter’s home.
Babagay told the committee that once inside the unmarked police vehicle, he saw his friend “CJ” already there in handcuffs.
He said one of the officers placed a sack over his head. Once deprived of the ability to see what was going on, he was elbowed and punched several times.
Curiously, CJ was eventually released and went home without any complaint filed against him. Jonel, on the other hand, was charged with drug pushing before the City Prosecutor’s Office.
CJ said he was riding pillion on his cousin’s motorcycle when they were stopped at a police checkpoint where he was taken in and cuffed.
Asked why no charges were filed against him, he said he was only used to draw in Jonel.
Acop obtained a closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage of the supposed arrest of Perito and the video tallied perfectly with her statements.
On the other hand, a barangay official who was named in the police report as an eyewitness to the buy-bust told the committee that he was not even around when the supposed transaction happened.
Mario Olivar, a barangay kagawad, said he was only called together with a member of the media when the arresting officers were already doing a supposed inventory of the drugs seized and other evidence.
For lack of time, the inquiry was suspended and will continue in the coming weeks.
