Four Quezon City policemen relieved from their posts for allegedly extorting P31,000 cash from a motorist were sent to Mindanao upon the order of President Duterte.
Senior Supt. Guillermo Eleazar, QC Police District director, said the four cops – PO3 Drazen Calix Banatao, PO3 Teodoro Morales, PO2 Juan de Asis Jr. and PO1 Philip John Laylo – were reassigned to Jolo, Sulu, under the Police Regional Office of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (PRO-ARMM).
Eleazar said no less than the President himself, through the Philippine National Police (PNP), ordered their reassignment after learning of their involvement in an alleged activity last week.
Their reassignment was issued by the PNP on November 12, it was learned.
Banatao, Morales, De Asis and Laylo are facing robbery-extortion charges filed by a certain Rex Macabeo Jr. who claimed that the four cops took from him P31,360 cash last November 4.
Macabeo narrated that he was driving his car along Commonwealth Avenue when the police officers accosted him for a traffic violation they could not explain.
He claimed that the police officers also threatened to put him in jail for keeping a bolo in his car.
The four cops denied the complainant’s allegations.
Eleazar said that aside from criminal charges, the District Internal Affairs Service is preparing to file administrative cases against the suspects. (Vanne Elaine P. Terrazola)