Police officers told to be careful after receiving death threats
BE VIGILANT.
This was the advice of Senior Supt. Manuel Abrugena, director of the Cebu Provincial Police Office (CPPO), to all policemen after they received reports that members of drug syndicates were after them.
Some police officers, he said, had been receiving death threats from unknown individuals.
As they went on to fight illegal drugs and criminality, Abrugena reminded his men to be careful at all times.
“Part ito (threats) ng aming trabaho. (Threats are part of our job.) With our intensified campaign against drugs, there will be illegal drug groups who want to retaliate,” he said in an interview on Monday.
Last Sunday, two retired police officers were killed by still unknown assailants in Barangay Tabunok, Talisay City, southern Cebu.
SPO1 Edgar Causon and retired SPO4 Ferdinand “Dindo” Navalez, were on board a motorcycle just outside a mall along N. Bacalso Ave. past 6 p.m. when a man approached and pumped bullets at them. The two victims succumbed to multiple gunshot wounds to the head and different parts of the body.
Their killing came 11 days after PO2 Lord Cañada was shot dead by unknown men outside a car repair shop in the adjacent town of Minglanilla last Nov. 14.
Chief Supt. Marlu Conag, Talisay police chief, said they were looking into all possible motives behind the killing of Causon and Navalez although it was likely that perpetrators were among the suspects arrested by the two retired policemen when they were still in active service.
Both Navalez and Causon were with the Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operation Task Group and the Provincial Drugs Enforcement Units (PDEU) in Talisay City.
Causon retired in 2017 and Navalez, in September 2013. Both were 54 when they were killed last Sunday.
Although they were no longer in the service, Causona and Navalez continued to be friends and spent time often in a coffee shop near the area where they were killed.
Conag said the assailants might have monitored the victims before carrying out the crime.
Abrugena, for his part, said they were looking into the closed-circuit televisions (CCTV) of the various establishments in the area to help find the perpetrators. /with Futch Anthony Inso
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