DEMORALIZED

By, Nitz Arancon,
Correspondent

THEY worked hard, spent time and money, and risked their lives to put the criminals in jail. All these are going down the drain right before their eyes, and there is nothing they can do to keep the crooks behind bars.

One by one, the drug cases are being dismissed, lowering the spirits of the city’s narcotics agents and the police. Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) regional director Wilkins Villanueva yesterday frowned over the revelation of city prosecutor Fidel Macauyag that at least 100 drug cases have already been dismissed because the cases were not reconstituted, and because all the evidence are gone.

“Magmahay gayud kami kon gi-dismiss sa court ang among gipasakang kaso batok sa mga drug suspects,” Villanueva said.
He said some of the evidence were already presented in court before the January fire.

Villanueva said he has ordered an inventory of the cases PDEA filed against drug suspects before the Hall of Justice fire, and would check exactly how many have already been dismissed.

He said the PDEA has yet to receive a report from the judiciary or copies of court rulings that dismissed the drug cases they filed before the fire because these were not reconstituted or due to the destroyed evidence. “We are closing monitoring the cases,” Villanueva said.

He said that in some of the cases, PDEA presented evidence in court before the fire, and he opined that the courts could rule on them.

Villanueva said, “We worked hard to catch the suspects and in building the cases against them to the point that we even risked our lives, and then they (judges and prosecutors) will just dismiss it just like that?” But Villanueva said the PDEA has already accepted that it would lose in some of the cases filed because evidence destroyed in the fire have not been presented in court.

City prosecutor Macauyag said, “Ma-dismiss gyud ang maong kaso kay unsa-on pa man sa prosecutor sa pagpadayon sa iyang presentation of evidence nga nasunog na man?”

City police director Senior Supt. Faro Antonio Olaguera yesterday confirmed that the city police has been receiving information about the dismissal of drug cases almost every week.

Olaguera said the cases were mostly dismissed as a consequence of the January Hall of Justice fire. He said the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office (Cocpo) was closely coordinating with the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (Cocpo) and barangay officials so that law enforcers could keep an eye on the freed drug suspects.

Olaguera said that based on experience, the drug suspects would likely “return to their old ways.” “We need to continually monitor them with the help of barangay officials. Dili baya lalim pero unsa-on man, nasunog man ang atong Hall of Justice. We have to face it… and (do) the needed adjustments,” he said.