PRO-7 chief: P381M worth of shabu seized in six months

Police Brigadier General Albert Ignatius Ferro, director of Police Regional Office in Central Visayas or PRO-7, enumerates PRO-7’s gains in six months. | CDND file Photo

CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Police Regional Office in Central Visayas or PRO-7 confiscated an estimated P381 million worth of suspected shabu and destroyed or confiscated P128 million worth of marijuana in six months of its  anti-illegal drugs campaign.

Police Brigadier General Albert Ignatius Ferro, PRO-7 director, said this as he enumerated PRO-7’s achievements in their campaign against illegal drugs, loose firearms, wanted personalities and the PRO-7’s role in addressing the effects of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the region.

Ferro said that in six months, the PRO-7 confiscated 56 kilos of suspected shabu with an estimated Dangerous Drugs Board value of P380,826,656 and eradicated and confiscated a ton worth of marijuana worth at least P128 million.

READ: Buy-bust ops yield P2.6M shabu, net 23 persons in a week

READ: P340K shabu seized; 2 high value individuals nabbed

These PRO-7 policemen conducted 2,642 anti-illegal drug operations to achieve these gains where 2,103 of those operations were buy-bust operations.

Aside from that, illegal drugs were also confiscated in 39  PRO-7 operations with search warrants, 79 operations with warrants of arrest, and 18 operations eradicating marijuana.

Three hundred twelve of those anti-illegal drug operations included 312 conducted through police response and 61 from checkpoints.

Within the conducted operations, Ferro said that they were able to arrest 3,978 drug personalities where 2,678 of them were drug pushers and 1,300 drug users. 

There were at least 319 high-value targets and 3,659 street level targets arrested. Of all the operations, 14 persons were recorded as casualties.

READ: Men in possession with illegal drugs, firearms, grenade arrested in Naga City

READ: 3-day patrol leads to confiscation of loose firearms

On the loose firearms campaign, Ferro said that more than 400 firearms were confiscated or voluntarily surrendered in 347 conducted operations of the PRO-7 policemen.

Ferro also said that the PRO-7 also located and arrested 1,556 individuals with 51 of them most wanted persons in the provincial level, 21 in the municipal level, 9 in city level and 24 in the police station level.

He said that the last six months had been like a “roller-coaster rider” for him since this was the time when the pandemic started.

“I inherited the big problem of COVID for Central Visayas. But even with those challenges we became vigilant and became victorious in so many ways,” said Ferro.

He said that PRO-7’s consistent operations on the anti-criminality campaign along with the strict measures to contain COVID-19, has helped decrease the crime volume of the region. 

Ferro said that the crime from his six month stay has dropped to 60 percent.

He also attributed PRO-7 achievements to the support of the community and the local government units.

He said that especially when the crisis of COVID-19 also struck PRO-7 policemen, they still received endless support both from public and private individuals./dbs