Cebu City’s Police Coordinating and Advisory Council will ask the Philippine National Police to review its policy on the conduct of illegal drug operations.
Lawyers of drug suspects have been exploiting stringent rules to get cases acquitted or dismissed on technicalities, according to the police.
Vice Mayor Edgardo Labella, who chairs the PCAC, said one rule that they are questioning is the requirement for the police to secure authorization or deputization from the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) for a raid.
Labella also cited section 21 of Republic Act 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 which requires a police team to conduct an inventory and photograph the confiscated materials in the presence of a media representative, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and any elected public official who shall be required to sign the copies of the inventory reports.
Police said they had difficulty getting media repersentatives or public officials to sign as witnesses of a raid and the inventory of seized items in a drug raid.
“These have become the weapon now of the defense lawyers. In the prosecution of anti-drug cases, defense lawyers will move for the dismissal of cases because of the provisions of the memo,” Labella said.
Labella said these requirements were cited by Senior Supt. Noli Romana, Cebu City police chief, as the reason behind the decline in the arrests of drug traffickers.
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