Syndicate employs beggars, cops

A well-entrenched gunrunning syndicate, reportedly responsible for supplying firearms to criminal elements operating in Metro Manila, is employing homeless persons and unscrupulous cops in transporting guns to avoid detection by the authorities.

This was exposed after operatives of the Maritime police, based in the coastal town of Navotas, apprehended a certain Carolina Mamacam, a 58-year-old vagrant, in possession of three homemade caliber .38 revolvers in an operation last Friday at Pier 12 in North Harbor.

According to Superintendent Ferdinand Yuzon, National Capital Region-Maritime Group chief, Mamacam, a native of Law-ang, Northern Samar, is one of several vagrants living along the railroad tracks in Divisoria.

Mamacam was apprehended at around 9:30 a.m. after she picked up the firearms from an unidentified passenger of a vessel that docked at Pier 12 earlier that morning.

The police, led by Chief Inspector Alberto Ocon and Inspector Estelito Peniano Jr., seized from the suspect two snub-nose and one long-barreled caliber .38 revolvers, a cellular phone and a piece of paper with a list of handguns.

The paper also stated that another "order," a .356 revolver, could not yet be delivered due to supply shortage.

"Ang .357 ginagawa pa dahil walang stock (The .357 is still being assembled because there is no stock at the moment)," it said.

"These are the guns commonly used by criminal elements here in Metro Manila," Yuzon told The STAR.

Yuzon said that his men had conducted surveillance operation for almost a week before they gathered the information that a Cebu-based gunrunning syndicate uses Pier 12 as their drop-off point.