ILOILO City – In six months of antidrug operations across Western Visayas, various police units of the Police Regional Office 6 (PRO-6) were able to confiscate shabu with a combined street value of P64 million and arrest 1,170 drug suspects.
The operations – a total of 852 were carried out – were from July to December 2019. Nine suspects died, PRO-6 data showed.
Clearing the region of illegal drugs remained a priority, according to Police Brigadier General Rene Paumuspusan, PRO-6 director.
This 2020 the Philippine National Police in Western Visayas aims to get the 105 remaining high-value drug targets it failed to neutralize in 2019. Included in these targets are elected public officials serving as drug protectors.
The No. 1 target remains to be Ernesto Bolivar, a resident of Barangay Guinacas, Pototan, Iloilo who has been in hiding since 2017.
Police units across the region are hunting him down, said Police Lieutenant Colonel Joem Malong, spokesperson of the PRO-6.
Of the 105 drug targets, 50 are in Negros Occidental, 32 in Bacolod City, 11 in Iloilo province, four in Capiz, three each in Antique and Iloilo City, and one each in Guimaras and in Aklan.
“The goal is to sustain the gains of the PRO-6 in the revitalized campaign against illegal drugs, targeting the remaining drug personalities and groups in Panay and Negros islands, and these include Bolivar,” said Malong.
Bolivar was believed to be a minion of Prevendido and stepped up drug trafficking activities after his boss died in a shootout with policemen on Sept. 1, 2017 in Barangay Balabago, Jaro district here.
To avoid detection, sources said, Bolivar has tapped the services of personalities whom the police are not familiar with.
Sources further told Panay News Bolivar has lots of money to buy protection from policemen and even businessmen.
Bolivar has a pending arrest warrant for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.
Although he managed to escape from policemen trying to entrap him in a buy-bust operation at his house in Barangay Guinacas, Pototan on Nov. 9, 2016, he was charged./PN
