ILLEGAL drugs have returned to Mindanao and the Visayas, and how!
Police officers continue to die in street firefights with drug traffickers, while congressmen engage in heated debates during inquiries in the House of Representatives, mainly about how the rights of individuals, even drug pushers and syndicate heads, were allegedly being violated by law enforcers in the conduct of past and present police operations.
Consider these recent incidents:
Two plainclothes anti-narcotics agents, one of them a woman, were killed while two others were wounded in a shootout with drug dealers in a bungled police entrapment operation in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte on Friday morning, November 15.
Patrolman Kirt Sipin and Cpl. Roselyn Bulias died from bullet wounds sustained in their brief exchange of gunfire with four shabu (methamphetamine hydrochloride) dealers they were to entrap. Two other cops, Patrolmen Jonel Ramos and Eddie Sugarol, were wounded.
‘It appears that drug smugglers and syndicate men are not bothered by the fact that they operate in the home territories of our most powerful officials.’
The PNP casualties were in a team tasked to buy a kilo of shabu from four dealers who pulled out guns and opened fire when they sensed that they were dealing with non-uniformed, law-enforcement operatives in the supposed tradeoff along a stretch of a highway near the Crossing Simuay Area in Sultan Kudarat. The two drug pushers, Suhod Kasim and Ting Katulangan, were slightly wounded in the encounter and are now in jail.
On the same day (Nov. 15), a drug trafficker was arrested in Datu Anggal Midtimbang, Maguindanao del Sur, while carrying 50 grams of shabu worth P340,000 to be delivered to a contact in that town.
Gil Cesario Castro, director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, told reporters on Saturday that Kenny Canasa, a resident of Padada town, Davao del Sur province in Region 11, is now detained.
He was intercepted by members of a local multi-sector anti-drug council while on his way to Barangay Nunangan in Datu Anggal Midtimbang.
In an even interesting turn of events, authorities seized nearly P400 million worth of suspected shabu during a K9 inspection at Liloan Port in Barangay San Roque, Liloan, Southern Leyte, on Friday, Nov. 8.
The large drug haul was discovered in a vehicle aboard a RORO ship arriving from Surigao City. Police reports reveal that 57 tea bags containing the alleged illegal substance, totaling 57 kilograms, were hidden in the vehicle. The seized shabu is estimated to have a street value of P387.6 million.
The driver, identified only as “Toring,” a resident of Surigao City, reportedly abandoned the vehicle upon noticing the presence of law enforcement. A manhunt has been mounted to arrest the said driver.
The bizarre part here is that Surigao City, the source of the illegal drugs in transit, is the turf of Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, head of the quad committee of the House investigating the killings in the war on drugs, and himself an avowed anti-drugs advocate. Southern Leyte, meanwhile belongs to Region 8 which is the area of House Speaker Martin Romualdez.
It appears that drug smugglers and syndicate men are not bothered by the fact that they operate in the home territories of our most powerful officials.
