CEBU CITY, Philippines –They just won’t stop.
Talisay City police arrested another drug suspect for the possession of nine sachets of suspected shabu as he was about to cross a quarantine checkpoint in Barangay Tangke in Talisay City on Friday afternoon, April 24, 2020.
Suspect Tomas Basalo, 55, claimed that he was a beneficiary of the government’s Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) and used his allocation to purchase shabu.
Police Major Gerard Ace Pelare, chief of the Talisay City Police Station, said that the suspect was lying.
He checked with the Department of Social Welfare and Development in Central Visayas (DSWD-7) this morning, April 25, and found that Basalo, a resident of Barangay Cansojong, is not on their list of UCT beneficiaries.
Pelare said they are now looking into the suspect’s background and his source of illegal drugs.
On Tuesday, Talisay police also arrested Edgardo Flores Jr., who works as a Job Order (JO) employee at the Cebu City Hall for the possession of six sachets of suspected shabu as he was about to cross the quarantine checkpoint that is located at the boundary of the cities of Cebu and Talisay at the Cebu South Coastal Road.
Read: Labella orders termination of City Hall JO arrested for drugs possession
“These drug personalities are desperate. They continue to carry drugs even if they are well aware that they could get caught. Still, they take their chances,” Pelare told CDN Digital.
Quoting the outcome of their initial investigation, Pelare said that Basalo was about to cross the quarantine checkpoint in Barangay Tangke when policemen in the area asked him to present his quarantine pass. He was walking from Tangke on his way home to Barangay Cansojong.
Sachets of suspected shabu fell as he was about to reach for something from inside his pocket.
Basalo is now detained at the Talisay City Police Station’s detention facility while police prepare for the filing of a complaint for the violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 against him. / dcb