Rupinta, tanod guilty of abuse of authority

The Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas found the barangay captain and tanod of Ermita guilty of abuse of authority and meted them the penalty of reprimand.

Barangay chief Felicisimo Rupinta and barangay tanod Rodolfo Rosales of Ermita, Cebu City were slapped with an administrative complaint for dishonesty after they failed to present the items they confiscated from Dante Ramada, Carlito Bacayan, and Marcelo Esperan.

Ramada, Bacayan, and Esperan filed the complaint against the barangay officials after the officials did not return to them the cannon barrels the respondents reportedly had confiscated.

The complainants alleged that on April 5, 2003 they excavated an area between their homes to search for hidden treasures that resulted to the find of what they believed were two cannon barrels, which weighed a total of 400 kilos.

They said they loaded their finds into a vehicle to be brought to the house of lawyer Manuel Paradela, the contact person of their Japanese buyer. However, when they reached the barangay hall the respondents hailed the vehicle and confiscated the two cannon barrels for "safekeeping".

On September 23 on that same year, when they asked for the whereabouts of their treasures Rupinta told them these were inside the barangay hall. On the ensuing months the complainants continued to prod the official who only repeated his answer.

But on December that year when they, again, asked where the barrels were Rupinta told them to instead ask the barangay tanods. When asked by the complainants, some barangay tanods pointed to another tanod, Rosales, whom they said had sold the items to a Chinese businessman.

Rupinta defended himself saying what he seized from the complainants was a vintage Japanese machine gun and not cannon barrels. He said he turned over the seized item to the PNP and that a certification issued by the police could prove that the item was in its care. He asserted that the seizure of the Japanese machine gun was in the exercise of their mandate as local public officials.

Rupinta claimed that the seized item was in the custody of the PNP and was certified by PNP SWAT team deputy chief Arnel Banzon. This led graft investigator Charina Navarro-Quijano, in her four-page decision, to say that "the charge of dishonesty against the respondents, premised on the latter's alleged failure to account for the confiscated item has no leg to stand on" thus the respondents could not be held liable for dishonesty.

The certification also proved that the item was a vintage machine gun.

However, it was not in his authority to confiscate the item as it was dug from the complainants' private property and because it was from their own property the item is also considered their own private property, Quijano said.

Even with Rupinta's claim that the seizure was made because the drilling caused too much noise that people had been complaining about, such "could not show his authority to confiscate the said item." "Considering that the purpose of the respondent in going to the complainants was to ask them to stop the drilling activity, which was causing too much noise, there was no reason for them to confiscate said item," the decision read.

The OMB-Visayas deemed that the "respondents abused their authority when they seized the complainants' private property without basis in law," thus they are "guilty of abuse of authority and meted the penalty of reprimand." - Liv G. Campo