The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in Negros Oriental has strongly debunked claims of hold-up suspects they were operatives of the agency when they pulled a broad daylight robbery of a drug store in Dumaguete Monday morning.
PDEA provincial director Rayford Yap said it was unfortunate that the name of the agency was dragged into the picture. He, however, stressed no robber in his right mind would identify himself or herself as the culprit and to be convicted and imprisoned later.
Director Yap said during the incident, only two female operatives were left in Dumaguete as most of them are in Cebu for a scheduled hearing of drugs cases filed in different courts.
He explained that one of the tasks of PDEA is to monitor drug stores especially in the selling of dangerous drugs that require yellow prescriptions from accredited doctors. Their task is to monitor if drugs with yellow prescriptions bought from the pharmacies are properly recorded otherwise these boticas can be likened into a pusher selling shabu.
The PDEA provincial director had raised the possibility their name was dragged into the picture because of the agency’s massive campaign against illegal drugs.
The Dumaguete city police are digging deeper into the broad daylight robbery with footages of the suspects caught in the CCTV cameras.
Supt. Crisaleo Tolentino, Dumaguete police chief, however, said the images are too dark but the blue guard on duty at the time of the robbery had a good look at one of the suspects when he was disarmed.
One of the employees was able to call for police assistance by exiting at the back door.
Initial investigations showed that the pharmacy is open 24 hours, with drinking sessions at the premises, which could have been taken advantage of by the culprits in casing their target.
The suspects, whose faces were not covered, carted away more than P100,000 in cash and fled on board a motorcycle. (PNA/JFP/Juancho Gallarde)
