Dagupan City police chief should resign

By Ermin F. Garcia Jr.

The recent arrest of Dagupan City’s suspected most notorious drug pushers is an added feather to the cap of the Regional Police Office under Chief Supt. Leo Bataoil, and specifically, Sr. Supt. Jane Aonso, head of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) Region 1.

But it is one helluva damn big embarrassment for the members of the Dagupan City Police, ironically recently adjudged the best city police station in the country, headed by Supt. Dionicio Borromeo.

The notorious suspects have long been under surveillance by the PDEA, a situation that was certainly not lost to the Dagupan police. That it took PDEA to collar the husband-and-wife team in the city itself makes one wonder what the city police station has been up to all these months and years.

Easily, one cannot but suspect that the drug trafficking trade in the city has been enjoying risk-free protection from some rogue elements inside the city police (or city hall) for over a long long time. The suspects are not strangers in the city but are known and supposedly “respectable” entities. (The husband, Datu Michael Kali Bagul as the president of the Dagupan Muslim Association, is personality known to all members of the city police station. He is the same leader of the local Moro community who signed a memo of agreement with the city government in the past expressing support for the anti-drug campaign in the city).

Indeed, that it even took PDEA to conduct the operation without the help of the Dagupan police says a lot about the latter’s integrity as a police force.

The recent and long overdue arrest of Mr. Bagul certainly raised questions about Chief Dionicio’s capability. Does he know who has been protecting Mr. Bagul and his ilk? If he doesn’t, isn’t it his business to know? Why didn’t his station set up the entrapment itself last year, last month, last week? Is the Dagupan Police so inept that it cannot entrap and arrest the city’s known notorious suspects? Does he know how many more suspected drug pushers reside in the city and continue to operate? What does he know and not know?

Unless Chief Borromeo views drug trafficking as a new phenomenon in the city, I’m afraid he has a lot of explaining to do. Failing that, he should promptly return the police station’s recent award to Camp Crame, and resign his post.

***

DOES MAYOR AL CARE? The next official who must account for the evident official inaction and indifference to the worsening drug trafficking in the city is City Mayor Al Fernandez himself.

Mayor Fernandez trumpeted that he wants a legacy as the man who made Dagupan the education center in the region. As it stands today, with drug pushers freely picking out their victims randomly inside campuses, thanks to him, the city may yet be known as the haven of drug pushers in the region!

The Fernandez administration had more than six months to assess the illegal drug situation in the city and as the recent arrest showed, there was no marching order to wage war on the pushers to make the city the educational center in the region. Gee, how much time does a mayor need to appreciate the gravity of the situation?

Is it possible that Mayor Fernandez, who is seen spending more time in his fishpond than in the mayor’s office, does not even know what’s happening inside the city’s police force? If Mayor Al doesn’t act swiftly to jail these drug pushers by kicking some ass in the police force, he could very well end up being suspected as the primary coddler of the drug lords in the city.

I know he isn’t but that is now doubted today. 

***

THE CITY COUNCIL THAT SEES, HEARS NOTHING. Another party that must account for the worsening illegal drug trafficking in the city is the city council.

There are 10 of them who are presumed to know and understand the problems of their constituents. Apparently, the unabated trafficking of illegal drugs never bothered them for a day. To my recollection, the city council never summoned the police chief to account for the worsening drug trafficking in the city and yet I am certain that all of them were aware that Mr. Bagul and his ilk remained untouchable over the years.

But nobody obviously wanted to know why.

Will the chair of the passive committee on peace and order please rise to be recognized?

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HELPLESS PEACE & ORDER COUNCIL? The illegal drug financiers are snaring more students everyday as users and pushers to their trade faster than our authorities can think of what and how to deal with them.    

School officials and the Peace and Order Council in the city have long complained about the unabated drug trafficking in the city but the city police never went beyond collaring small time couriers and pushers. That the Peace and Order Council didn’t press for more substantive accomplishments in the war against illegal drugs speaks of the group’s helplessness, and perhaps complacency.  

Thank God for the PDEA’s regional office. These brave souls had the guts to act and save hundreds of families in the city not only from being emotionally torn but from certain financial ruin.

When can the city’s residents finally rely on its mayor and chief of police to protect them from the clutches of the drug lords?

(Readers may reach columnist at punch.sunday@gmail.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/punchline/
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