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BY RUBY SILUBRICO
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Sunday, November 5, 2017
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ILOILO City – Charges for violation of the Comprehensive Firearms and Ammunition Regulation Act may be filed against a former policeman and his cousin from Lambunao, Iloilo.
Ex-Police Officer 1 Phoebus Batoc, 51, and cousin Rufino Catedral, 33, were arrested in Barangay San Jose, San Miguel town for alleged gunrunning.
The San Miguel police set up an entrapment against them at around 3:30 p.m. on Friday.
Officers seized from the suspects a .45 pistol loaded with three bullets, said Senior Inspector Francis Albert Fortunado, municipal police chief.
They were acting on intelligence information that the former policeman and his cousin were engaged in gunrunning, Fortunado said.
It took the San Miguel police more than a week to get the suspect to agree to the deal in Barangay San Jose.
During the entrapment, Batoc sold to police poseur buyers the pistol for P20,000, said Fortunado.
Batoc lived in Barangay Legayada, Lambunao while Catedral was a resident of Barangay Tuburan in the same town.
Once assigned at the Philippine National Police headquarters in Quezon City, Batoc was terminated from the service sometime in 2003 for lack of eligibility, Fortunado said, citing intelligence information.
Batoc, according to Fortunado, was unable to finish college.
“Dati pwede ka na makapasok sa pagkapulis kahit hindi ka college graduate,” the San Miguel police chief said. “Pero ngayon dapat naka-graduate ka ng college, kaya na-terminate siya (Batoc).”
Batoc claimed that he applied for early retirement prior to his termination.
He also admitted to engaging in gunrunning but only because he needed money for the tuition of his siblings, Fortunado said.
“We are still trying to know where the suspects get their firearms and where they hide their supply,” said Fortunado.
The Comprehensive Firearms and Ammunition Regulation Act, or Republic Act 10591, regulates the “ownership, possession, carrying, manufacture, dealing in and importation of firearms, ammunition, or parts thereof.”
It aims to “provide legal support to law enforcement agencies in their campaign against crime, stop the proliferation of illegal firearms or weapons and the illegal manufacture of firearms or weapons, ammunition and parts thereof.”
The law penalizes the following, among others:
* unlawful acquisition or possession of firearms and ammunition
* use of loose firearm in the commission of a crime
* absence of permit to carry outside of residence
* unlawful manufacture, importation, sale, or disposition of firearms or ammunition or parts thereof, and machinery, tool or instrument used or intended to be used in the manufacture of firearms, ammunition or parts thereof
* arms smuggling
* tampering, obliteration or alteration of firearms identification
* use of an imitation firearm
* illegal transfer/registration of firearms./PN
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