Last week's rounds of raids exposed the method of consignment deal in illegal drug retail as confessed by a 63-year-old mother caught red-handed in barangay Badiang, Inabanga.
One Pia Tacatani, 63, claimed to be just a passive retailer wherein a supplier delivers the packs of shabu to her house and only pays them when already sold.
She said young users in the neighborhood just go to her house to buy shabu and she only earned from the mark-up and disclosed that the supplier just hangs around the barangay to corner the business.
The police team even found some packs of shabu placed on a saucer with strips of tinfoil that are known paraphernalia in shabu pot session.
Some of the sachets of shabu were found beneath a Sto. Niño statue on her makeshift praying table.
She even almost spilled the beans when interviewed live over dyRD while the raid was going on.
Tacatani was among those caught in the second round of raid Thursday morning launched by the composite team of Inabanga and the Provincial Public Safety Company (PPSC), under Col. Clarito Baja and PO2 Rolex Tamara.
Results of the test at the crime laboratory released Friday afternoon found all the crystalline materials seized from her house, and those from two other suspects to be shabu.
The PPSC is yet to file on Monday the charges of possession of illegal drugs, a violation of Article II Section 11 of Republic Act 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drug Act of 2002 against Tacatani, and three other subjects of search warrant served last Thursday-Mary Ann Gudito Añasco, Expedito Lofranco, and Rey Braman Reyes.
However, it was learned on Saturday that Añasco and Reyes had already posted bail.
The raiding team swooped down Tacatani's house and two others in Inabanga at around 7 a.m. Thursday by virtue of a search warrant issued by Judge Fernando Fuentes III of the RTC Branch 49.
Tacatani yielded 12 small transparent cellophane packs of shabu placed inside the three boxes as small as those used in vapor rub packaging, a cellophane strip used in repacking shabu, one empty plastic vial of Betet ointment containing 25 strips of tinfoil, two improvised tooter and a forcep.
The shabu seized from Tacatani weighed 0.28 grams.
From her house, the raiding team proceeded to the house of his son, Rizalde, about 100 meters away but found nothing.
They then proceeded to barangay Cogon of the same town where they chanced on 33-year-old Mary Ann Gudito Añasco. But her live-in partner, Expedito Lofranco, outsmarted them in the chase.
Both were subjects of another search warrant.
The raiding team seized six small cellophane packs containing shabu found to have weighed 0.12 grams and P2,500 cash from the house where they both lived.
Lofranco is now a subject of manhunt.
Baja's team then brought Tacatani and Gudito to the PPSC headquarter at Camp Dagohoy, along with another suspect caught earlier that day.
Prior to the Inabanga raid, the team first swooped down the house of another suspect, Rey Braman Reyes in Poblacion, Ubay at dawn.
Reyes yielded three sachets of shabu found to have weighed 0.05 grams.
Judge Ermasita Masamayor of the RTC Branch 52 in Talibon issued the search warrant on Reyes.
Police excluded Tacatani's son, Rizalde in the charges, though he was also a subject of a search warrant, since they seized no evidence from him.
Radio reporter Weli Maestrado, who joined the raiding team as witness, narrated that they almost had an accident on their way to Inabanga from Ubay.
Maestrado said that upon reaching Trinidad town, the blinker of one of the police car in the convoy was accidentally detached prompting its driver to step on the brakes.
The next police car following it, running at a speed of approximately 120 kilometers per hour, slightly rammed its rear and both cars had to spin twice to avoid full collision, but sending one of them to the canal by the roadside.
It delayed the operation a bit, but nonetheless they still caught up with all the subjects in the search warrants on location, except that Lofranco managed to elude arrest. - Bohol Chronicle
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