Cebu City Councilor Dave Tumulak (third, right) is accompanied by PDEA regional director Yogi Felimon Ruiz as they leave the City Jail after the March 18 Operation Greyhound.
CDN Photo/Lito Tecson
Last Saturday dawn’s Operation Greyhound at the Cebu City Jail may have yielded fewer contraband, but Councilor Dave Tumulak said there should be no letup in the campaign to clear the jail of illegal items.
“There was fewer shabu seized, only five grams. It seems that the jail officers are doing their jobs. I’m just hoping they can improve more,” he said.
Tumulak, deputy mayor on police matters, said he was still concerned that there were also other contraband like bladed weapons and a baseball bat among others.
Last Saturday’s operation yielded shabu worth P30,000, drug paraphernalia, nine cellphones, bladed weapons and a notebook that contains the
names of drug buyers of a drug lord detained in the facility.
In last year’s Greyhound operation, several kilos of shabu, P4.7 million in cash, Nubain and other prohibited items were seized in a joint police and military operation.
Tumulak also ruled out the possibility that news of the operation may have been leaked to the inmates.
Regional Director Yogi Filemon Ruiz of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA-7) earlier said they found a note on the cabinet of one of the inmates which read something like, “Sir, ayaw lang ni ninyo gub-a akoang butanganan kay naa diri akong paninda (Sir, don’t destroy this cabinet, it only contains things that I sell).”
Tumulak said this does not necessarily mean that the note was addressed to the raiding team.
He said it could be addressed to the jail guards in the facility or to other inmates that might have caused trouble before.
He said based on what he saw, the notebook contained aliases of people allegedly buying drugs from a drug lord who is an inmate at the city jail.
It also contained the amount of deposits which may have been payments made by these customers.
Tumulak said last Saturday’s operation also allowed him to observe the problems inside the facility.
“The city needs to look into other improvements needed that the city can support like we need to improve the water supply. We also need to separate inmates who have communicable diseases and those that are lesser offenders,” he said.
The city jail is overpopulated with more than 4,000 inmates, way above its capacity of 1,600 inmates.