Pampanga cops eye charges against judge

FLORIDABLANCA, Pampanga – Provincial police chief Senior Superintendent Keith Singian said he might file charges of “abuse of discretion” against a court judge who junked the police’s petition for a search warrant on padlocked buildings in a compound that already yielded shabu and paraphernalia in a raid in Barangay Consuelo here on Wednesday.

“How can we build up cases if things end up this way?” Singian asked after Executive Judge Pamela Anne Maxino of the Regional Trial Court in Guagua denied the police’s petition for search warrants.

He said that the padlocked buildings could contain more evidences to build up stronger cases against the suspects, most of whom have yet to be caught.

On Wednesday, the Pampanga police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency raided a suspected shabu laboratory in Barangay Consuelo being operated by three Chinese nationals identified as Peter Pei, Caroline Dy and Eugene Bao.

Singian said that initially, the police were merely responding to a land dispute in the area after a former worker from Iraq came home to find out that his property was already occupied by foreigners after some error in cadastral surveys.

The policemen, however, saw from the outside shabu paraphernalia inside the building, prompting them to raid the site. They then contacted the PDEA for a planned raid.

Some P1.4 million worth of chemical substances such as chloroform, pyridine and other drug precursors and several equipment used in manufacturing shabu were confiscated by the raiding team.

“I am surprised that the judge denied us the search warrant,” Singian said.

He said that the judge even called for the testimony of the chemist of the PDEA pending the petition, but he noted that “she didn’t even ask one question.”

“We are studying whether we should file abuse of discretion charges against her, perhaps before the Ombudsman,” he added.

Meanwhile, cops have been assigned to secure the two buildings which could contain more evidence against the suspects in Wednesday’s raid.

The maintainers of the shabu laboratory, mostly Chinese nationals, have remained at large. Three of them were identified already.