Cebu City Police Office | contributed photo
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Cebu City policemen are trying to find ways to cut the link between inmates inside the Cebu City Jail and those drug personalities outside the jail, who are running their illegal drug business.
This was after the arrest of a high value individual (HVI), who was caught with P1 million worth of suspected shabu during a buy-bust operation in Barangay Basak Pardo in Cebu City last Sunday afternoon, March 6.
Randy Aranduque, 35, was caught with 150 grams of suspected shabu during the operation, said Police Lieutenant Colonel Wilbert Parilla, deputy director for operations of the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) during a briefing on Monday, March 7.
Aranduque allegedly later told police that he had transactions inside the Cebu City Jail and that he was only a distributor of their drug operations.
Parilla said drug personalities with connections inside the Cebu City Jail — inmates who allegedly provide the source to get the supply of illegal drugs to these drug personalities—had been a trend since the past few years in Cebu City.
He said that most of the major arrests in the city in the past years or more than half of them point to sources of their illegal drugs inside the city jail.
With this, the CCPO, the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) and the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) are planning to hold quarterly coordination meetings to find ways to address this issue.
Parilla said the police could only conduct operations and arrest drug personalities operating outside the jail.
When the arrested persons would be put in prison, then they would be under the jurisdiction of the BJMP.
Parilla said they would coordinate with the BJMP officials manning the Cebu City Jail once they had an arrested drug personality, during the investigation, naming an inmate as their connection in the illegal drug trade.
The BJMP officials will then verify the police information, then isolate the inmate involved and then conduct a Greyhound Operation or a surprise inspection in the prison cells to find contraband such as cellphones.
Aside from that, Parilla said that the BJMP had also done their own internal cleansing of their personnel.
He also said that inmates, who had connections on the supply of illegal drugs, had also gotten wiser as they would now only use aliases or nicknames in transacting with the people outside the jail running their illegal drugs business.
Parilla said this had made our jobs in identifying these inmates, who were named by our arrested drug personalities, more challenging.
He said by using aliases or nicknames, tracing the drug suppliers identity would be very difficult because the arrested drug personality would not know the real name of the inmate he was transacting with.
He cited a way to stop this trend and that would be not to allow these inmates from having access to cellphones, which they could use to communicate to their contacts outside the jail.
He said having cellphones inside the jail was prohibited but in recent greyhound operations or surprise inspections in inmates cells, cellphones would sometimes be found.
“As I have said the BJMP has their own investigation because they also have their own internal cleansing,” said Parilla on the inmates caught having cellphones inside the jail.
“Nganong di gyud mahurot ang communication sa sud so based sa atong observation sa ilang pamaagi lisod ra man gyud palutson ang cellphone kung wala kay connection sa sulod,” he said.
(Why won’t the communication devices (cellphones) be gone in jail, so based on our observation on their process, it is very difficult to get a cellphone inside the prison if you don’t have a connection inside.)
“So mao nay isa sa atong nakita dunay possibilidad nga duna ra pud sa sulod sa personnel ang makapasulod,” he added.
(So that is one of the possible lapses that we see that there is a jail guard or jail personnel who allowed the entry (of the cellphone).)
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