P20.4-M worth shabu in seized in Zamboanga police operation

COTABATO CITY — Policemen confiscated P20.4 million worth of shabu from a dealer with alleged links to drug rings in the Bangsamoro region, who was apprehended in Barangay Zone II in Zamboanga City at noon on Tuesday, October 22.

The suspect, whose name was withheld by the Police Regional Office-9 while validation of his reported connections with shabu dealers in Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte and in Cotabato City, all in the Bangsamoro region, are still underway.

Brig. Gen. Bowenn Joey Masauding, director of PRO-9, and his counterpart in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, Brig. Gen. Romeo Macapaz, are looking into tips from confidential informants about the suspect’s distribution of shabu to contacts in towns in BARMM that are close to the Zamboanga peninsula.

Masauding was quoted in reports of radio stations in Central Mindanao on Tuesday afternoon as saying that personnel of different units under PRO-9, the Zamboanga City Police Office and intelligence agents from the Naval Intelligence and Security Group–Western Mindanao of the Philippine Navy cooperated in the operation that led to the arrest of the lone male trafficker and confiscation of shabu.

The suspect yielded peacefully when policemen and non-uniformed Philippine Navy agents detained him after selling P20.4 million worth of shabu during a tradeoff along a stretch of the busy Mayor Jaldon Street in Zamboanga City.

Personnel of police anti-narcotics units in the Bangsamoro region and Region 12 had clamped down six large-scale shabu dealers from Zamboanga City in separate entrapment operations in Cotabato City and in the adjoining Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte and Cotabato provinces in the past 24 months.