Wycoco refutes ‘fall guys’ raps of Southern Tagalog police

National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) director Reynaldo Wycoco has asserted that his agency’s mandate is "national in scope" as it refuted accusations that NBI agents had "intruded" in the affairs of the Southern Tagalog police and arrested "fall guys" in two celebrated killings.

Wycoco, in a letter to Director Domingo Reyes, Region 4 police director, said the NBI is authorized to investigate violations of the law in all municipalities, cities and provinces under Republic Act 157 that created the bureau on June 19, 1947.

Earlier, Reyes expressed misgivings about the NBI agents arresting suspects different from the Laguna police’s, in the recent massacre of four members of the Amarante family in Cabuyao town and in the killing of Dr. Franklin Avellaneda in Los Baños.

Reyes accused NBI agents of conducting "fishing expeditions" to make it appear that they are on top of cases which the local police are handling.

"We do not refute the fact that both cases are within your territorial jurisdiction. Please be informed nevertheless, that the NBI is national in scope and its legislated authority to investigate violations of law extends to all municipalities, cities and provinces of the entire Philippine archipelago," Wycoco said in his letter.

Under RA 157, the NBI, he added, "has investigation jurisdiction over criminal cases, upon its own initiative and as public interest may require."

Wycoco also denied that NBI agents, who worked on both cases, failed to coordinate with the Laguna police under Senior Superintendent Nilo de la Cruz.

"Our men and women are under constant instructions to extend full cooperation to all our brothers in the realm of law enforcement, and personal glory should never dim their vision for our common mandate: public service," Wycoco said.

"Certainly, allegations of breach of this rule, such as you have made, merit our full attention. Much is our concern since the incidents...seem to have threatened to undermine this friendship between our men and the one that has long existed between us as fellow officers," the NBI director added.

The NBI earlier had filed charges of robbery with homicide against three suspects in the Avellaneda slaying: Kissinger Kraft, 20, a dismissed sociology student of the University of the Philippines-Los Baños and an officer of the Tau Gamma Phi fraternity; Mark Alba, 20, and Antonio Rivera Jr., 20, both sociology students of UPLB.

They were also charged with frustrated homicide for the wounding of Avellaneda’s companion, Edmundo Dayag, a computer consultant of the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

Alba and Rivera subsequently surrendered upon learning that the NBI was hunting them down. Alba yielded to the Laguna police, and Rivera, to the NBI-Metro Manila office.

The Laguna police, for their part, have also filed similar charges albeit against a different set of suspects who are still at-large.

The same situation is true in the Amarante massacre where the NBI had arrested three suspected guns-for-hire, namely, Jose Bascon, Mario Caparas and Eduardo Cayaban.

The NBI agents, who worked on both cases, merely scoffed at Reyes’ accusations.

"How can he (Reyes) say that he has a separate set of suspects and those we have charged are fall guys, when we have in our custody the vital witnesses for both cases. The suspects we have charged were all positively identified by the witnesses, including Dayag who was under the NBI’s protection all along," one of the agents said.

The NBI agents said Reyes was merely sourgraping over their accomplishments.

"We have properly coordinated with his people when we conducted the operations. He is just probably bitter because we cracked the cases first," an agent said.