In two days beginning Thursday last week, police authorities from 47 stations all over Bohol spun to action.
Whether it was ordered or not, police stations stirred and their chiefs of police called their men to a command conference to swoop down on drug personalities and effect the biggest raid in the history of Bohol.
The plan was to offer the heads of 50 or more drug personalities by the 50 raids, to appropriately mark a big day for Bohol police.
Historic, it would be as it would be a tribute to the 50th birth anniversary of Bohol’s top cop, PSSupt Dennis Agustin.
PNP senior officials, or whosoever conceptualized the move, have every reason to do so.
Agustin, upon assumption to Bohol, took to heart the order he received from Police General Prudencio Bañas, who shared a dreamy goal of declaring Bohol as the first drug-free province.
Both Bañas and Agustin had less than a couple of months in newly assigned posts: Bañas to head the regional police while Agustin has the provincial force under him.
What the two apparently did not know was that, they were pitifully dipped in a cauldron where drugs is allegedly stirred into distribution by forces beyond the commerce of men who have no balls of steel.
PD Agustin proved he was no less than that, by horning his way into the police organization and spearheading that infamous crusade that took his some of his finest officers despite shaking a hornets nest which is too close to Camp Dagohoy.
Police officers and station commanders of less timber, have to play it cool, and looked the other way.
Not on the 50th birth anniversary of the provincial police chief.
Those two days netted for Bohol and the police organization P5 million worth of drugs and money, over 50 personalities and an undetermined number of hassling trial appearances for police officers involved in the raids.
We need to congratulate the police for doing so.
The subliminal message beyond these raids however is that: the police have just shown us a reason to believe that they all know who in their respective areas of jurisdiction are into drugs.
For them to be able to sweep a massive raid in two days netting that much number of personalities, drugs and paraphernalia, it must indeed be a huge and sweeping problem, this drug affectation is.
Secondly, another troubling message we get from this is: (and authorities can refute us) the drug campaign in Bohol can all be called “artificial” and “half-hearted” on the very least.
No matter how successful the raids convey to all of Boholanos, the sub-currents tell us, how come the police stations, on non birth days of local officials could not muster the same magnitude of raids, if this was not just for show?
Would this bolster the claim a topnotch lawyer has been persistently announcing on the air: that police, who happen to be getting lifeblood from the local leadership, could do nothing with the problem, if they want their lifeline to be alive?
If this tells us that, then nobody in the high ranks of the police organization in Bohol realized the repercussions of a seemingly harmless, in fact gloriously planned sweeping raid.
The biggest realization we prayed not any ordinary Boholano can connect, is that by the raid, police have just haphazardly shown a drama which projects how extremely powerless and how farcical this local drug enforcement is.
This should not also connect the allegations that, not much of court convictions happen especially to the big-boys in the industry. The courts, according to out information, has been a beneficiary of monetary allowances from the provincial government.
Feeding the hand that feeds, still remains to be one act Boholanos could not do.
Well, except for the Boholanos who claim to be one, but their heart and soul, they have sold to the devil.
So therefore, the 50 raids for the 50th birthday of the police director shown a 50/50 image of the police and drug enforcement. And we hope they will live through this, alive.
