The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency is investigating a village chairman and local policemen in Mabalacat, Pampanga over drug-related activities that have become a “cottage industry” on an entire alley there.
During an operation Thursday night, PDEA and Philippine Coast Guard agents rounded up 27 suspects in Purok Roxas in Barangay Dau, Mabalacat town.
Nineteen of the suspects were charged for violation of Section 5 (Sale of Dangerous Drugs) in relation to Section 6 (Maintanance of a Drug Den) Article II of Republic Act 9165. They underwent inquest proceedings on Friday.
They were arrested in simultaneous buy-bust and entrapment operations and service of search warrant issued by Judge Thelma Ponferrada.
According to the PDEA, they recovered more or less one kilogram of shabu worth P10,000.
PDEA spokesman Derrick Arnold Carreon said that during tactical interrogation, the suspects claimed the village chairman “has knowledge” of the drug-related activities there.
“We still don’t have substantial evidence directly linking him or the police (to the drug-related activities). We will be conducting a deeper investigation on allegations of his (village chairman’s) link (to the drug-related activities) or to raise questions on why there seems to be inaction on his part,” Carreon said in an interview.
Carreon declined to mention the name of the village chairman pending the investigation.
The spokesman hinted that during the operation, the chairman “failed to surface” even if it was a “major drug raid.”
Carreon noted that the entire alley is involved in the drug-related activities, with PDEA Director General Dionisio Santiago claiming the residents’ area have turned these activities into a “cottage industry.”
“It was practically a shabu tiangge (flea market) and some of the houses have been turned into drug dens,” Carreon said.
“Majority of the small establishments and sari-sari stores are into selling drugs and paraphernalia,” he said.
Shabu lab raided in Legazpi City
In related developments, combined elements of the Philippine National Police and the PDEA had swooped down into a shabu laboratory in Legazpi City at around 11 a.m. yesterday, arrested two Taiwanese nationals and two Filipino helpers and seized equipment being used in manufacturing shabu.
Senior Superintendent Eleazar Bron, Bicol police spokesman, said that the shabu laboratory was located at the second and third floors of the Aurora Building in Sitio Barriada in Barangay 38 in Legazpi.
Bron said that among the equipment seized inside the laboratory were those being used in manufacturing shabu. He refused, however, to give estimate as to the worth of the seized items since an inventory was still ongoing until press time.
Senior Superintendent Joel Baloro, Albay police director, said that two Taiwanese nationals, whose names were withheld, and two Filipinos, who were believed to be working as helpers in the laboratory, were arrested during the raid.
Baloro said the raid was conducted by virtue of a search warrant issued by Regional Trial Court Branch 18 Judge Mamerto Buban in Tabaco City.
Baloro said the raid was the offshoot of a month-long surveillance conducted by police intelligence agents following complaints from residents near the laboratory that they were smelling foul odors oozing out of the three-storey apartment.
Initial investigation showed that the suspects had started renting the building’s second and third floors in April 2007, with a certain Robert Reyes as the registered occupant.
Although there was no official estimate yet of the amount of the seized laboratory equipment as of press time, authorities believed these could cost millions of pesos.
The raid was the third in Bicol this year, with the first conducted in Camarines Sur and the second in Masbate. – With Ric Sapnu