--Hannah Arendt
By Alex P. Vidal
NEW YORK CITY -- Retired SPO2 Ronald “Apple” Alag, 57, was one of the three rookie cops known in Iloilo City in the Philippines as “small but terrible” during the heyday of the late former Metrodistrict Police Command (Metrodiscom) chief, Col. Achilles Plagata, in the mid-80’s.
“Si Apple (Alag) masaligan ko gid ina. Maboot ina nga pulis (I have trust in Apple. He is a good cop),” Plagata told us, members of the Iloilo City Hall Press Corps, when “Tay Achil” was city councilor in the 90’s.
Plagata’s reaction came after Apple hogged headlines in the local media when a fellow cop, Douglas Demonteverde, nearly shot Apple with an armalite rifle inside the Arevelo Police Precinct in Villa, Arevalo district sometime in 1996.
This was how Apple’s name first became controversial.
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Apple, then the Arevalo police desk sergeant, confronted Demonteverde for his tardiness, among other infractions.
Demonteverde, who didn’t like the admonition, aimed the firearm at Apple and yelled in local dialect, “So what if you are an Alag? I am not afraid to shoot you right now.”
Cooler heads pacified them.
“This is now my second life,” Apple told reporters who responded in the station.
He didn’t fight back “because I was armed only with a .38 caliber.”
Aside from Apple, fellow rookie cops Ricky Thornton and Nathaniel Ore were also known as “small but terrible” because of their frame and effectiveness in hunting down snatchers, thieves, and other criminals.
They could be mistaken for civilians and teenagers, thus they were able to easily round up some of the most notorious criminals in the metropolis.
Apple, Thornton, Ore, Ashley Agustin, Danilo Tan were five of the finest and the best cops under Plagata’s wing who did excellent intelligence works for the Metrodiscom (now the Iloilo City Police Office).
Because of their sharpness and impressive abilities, criminals in Iloilo City fell one after the other and peace and order was at its lowest in those years.
Alag became known as “Apple” because “he was the apple of the eyes” of his family, colleagues, some reporters and even criminals.
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I first heard of Apple in 1996 when his name surfaced as one of the two cops linked to the late controversial Supt. Mosa “Batman” Amiyong, who was gunned down on November 22, 2013 on Quirino Bridge in Iloilo City.
Apple and colleague Rex Egpuara, a former bodyguard of the slain Bombo Radyo anchorman Rino Arcones, reportedly “worked” for Amiyong, who was then suspected of “facilitating” the entry of illegal drugs from Mindanao to Iloilo.
There was no evidence that directly linked Apple and Egpuara to Amiyong’s alleged illegal activities.
Before the late suspected drug lord Melvin “Boyet” Odicta Sr. ruled the illegal drug trade in Western Visayas, then Metrodiscom chief, Col. Vicente Neptuno, using a K9 dog, nabbed suspected drug dealer, Bolane Daquiado, nephew of the late Agusan del Norte Mayor Nilo “Taklong” Soliva, in a raid in Jereos Extension, La Paz district.
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Writing for Sun.Star Iloilo, I again heard of Apple’s name but there was no evidence to link him to Bolane’s group.
Reporters covering the police beat, fellow cops and family members described Apple as “maboot, maalwan, maamigohon kag mapisan (a good-natured person, generous, friendly, diligent).”
When he retired from the PNP in 2005, Apple’s “only mistake” was he became known as Odicta’s “bodyguard”.
Apple reportedly “sidelined” as security guard in Odicta’s pawnshop in Maria Clara, City Proper but was actually “actively involved in Odicta’s illegal drug trade” as “protector.”
There was no evidence that Apple personally sold illegal drugs after Odicta and his wife, Meriam, were murdered in Caticlan, Aklan two years ago, but the Police Regional Office 6 (PRO-6) confirmed he was in the watch list of personalities engaged in illegal drugs.
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Apple’s murder by two riding-in-tandem assailants (one had served as the shooter and the other as the driver) in the morning on November 19, 2018 in Brgy. Villa Anita, Iloilo City Proper was brazen because it happened in broad daylight (at around 8 o’clock in the morning) in his own territory, the place where he grew up.
Apple was driving his white van when the unidentified gunman, a back rider, shot him on his left side. He died of multiple gunshot wounds in the hospital.
The crime was captured on CCTV.
The attackers were so determined to finish him off that they weren’t afraid to attack Apple in the village where the incumbent punong barangay is his brother, Ondoy, a former firefighter.
Of the three Alags who served as law enforcers, Apple was considered as “the most well-loved and admired” by his friends and neighbors.
Apple’s two other older brothers are now retired former Philippine Constabulary (PC) members Alfonso and Celoy, who were known as “astigs” (toughies) who “didn’t have mercy for the criminals.”
Some inmates in the Iloilo City Police Office (ICPO) reportedly “liked” Apple “because he didn’t harm them physically and (he) even shared some of his ‘blessings’ to them.”
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