By: Rey Anthony Chiu

The Regional Peace and Order Council in Central Visayas, in its most recent meeting, assented to the Bohol peace council in ruling for a additional chemists at the police and government narcotic agency to expedite resolution of drug related cases. In its meeting Thursday last week at the Bohol Tropics Resort here, no less than police regional Director Danilo Constantino who took notice of the Provincial Peace and Order Council (PPOC) Special Action Committee (SAC) recommendation to help fast-track the processes in drug interdictions. The PPOC SAC recommends for the Philippine National Police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency to put up more technical personnel in its crime laboratories, to make sure that they are operational 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That means more chemists, technical men who could readily make the confirmatory tests if the illegal substances gathered from the raids or buy-bust operations are positively identified and confirmed. This also means these chemists should be part of the raiding team, immediately making initial reagent tests to confirm the drugs substances involved.

The absence of ready chemists at crime labs have been pinpointed as a major concern as this conveniently allows for the brief lull of “unaccounted” moment in the chain of custody of the evidence. In cases when the operations happen on wee hours and there is no available chemist on duty at police crime or narcotic laboratories, operation team leaders who claim custody of the evidence usually safe-keep the suspected illegal substances in police vaults, a rather unorthodox way, not prescribed by law. In earlier reports, PPOC raised concern over a very lackluster performance of police officers and narcotic agents in the prosecution especially when the chain of custody is raised. Of the 99 cases file against suspected drug offenders in 2013, police scored only 4 convictions, the rest are either dismissed for technical debilities, according to Provincial prosecutor Macario Delusa during a previous council meeting.

On this, the PPOC resolved to dig into a locally supported program called Legal Assistance to Effective Law Enforcement Program (LAELEP) for more trainings to respond to the problem of technicality rulings that shoot down a potentially huge haul of drug offenders from the streets. On this, the RPOC adopted the Bohol PPOC Position and PCInspector Constantino asked the PROC to furnish a copy of the recommendations to the PNP, so appropriate allocations can be effected. General Constantino also hinted that it could be better if the same recommendation could be done in all regional and provincial offices. The PDEA however took the PPOC-RPOC recommendation cautiously. PDEA 7 Regional Director Lyndon Aspacio told that body that the premier drug agency mandated to pursue drugs is hard up with funds especially when putting up a narcotic crime lab would entail some P7M.