‘Protect yourselves at all times’

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.”
--Albert Einstein

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY --Now that the riding-in-tandem’s reign of terror has remained unabated in the Philippines, active cops and former colleagues of slain retired Iloilo City policeman Ronaldo “Apple” Alag in the Philippines included in the narco list of President Rodrigo R. Duterte should not let their guards down.
Even politicians, lawyers, judges, journalists, housewives, teachers, sidewalk vendors, and other civilians are not exempted from a man-made horror and terror.
As we tell the boxers before the start of a boxing bout, “protect yourselves as all times.”
There is no guarantee that the liquidation squad won’t strike anew.
There have been scores of characters linked to illegal drugs waylaid and executed by the notorious motorcycle-riding gunmen, but not a single assailant has been arrested or identified.

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Except in the case of PO2 Dorben “Benjo Acap of the PNP Regional Personnel Holding and Accounting Unit (RPHAU) based in Camp Delgado in Iloilo City, who survived an ambush attempt in Sitio Pajo, Brgy. Dulonan, Arevalo District on June 26, 2018 and managed to fire back and hit his shooter, PO2 Melvin Mocorro, all other crimes committed by the riding-in-tandem murderers have remained unsolved.
Even if Mocorro had been collared and charged in court, no one was expecting him to go to jail for Acap’s foiled murder.
Many people suspect Mocorro’s superiors will make sure he will be “off the hook.”
We remember that among those mentioned by President Duterte in his “narco list” were retired Iloilo cops Elvis Donasco and Remy Donasco.
The Donasco brothers have denied any involvement in any illegal activities, including drug trafficking.
They also denied they were protectors of drug traffickers operating in Western Visayas.
If the charges against all the suspects are based on falsehood and erratic intelligence data, they shouldn’t be harmed even with a ten-foot pole.
If the reports are accurate, file charges against them in court so they can defend themselves.
A big no to summary execution.

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The Donasco brothers and other characters in the president’s “narco list” could be victims of jealousy and envy.
Unless the “intelligence” reports reaching President Duterte have been verified and substantiated, it’s not fair to eternally attach their names to unlawful activities.
Like all victims of extra-judicial killings (EJK), all other suspects should be given their day in court.
Just the same. They should not trust anyone who ride not just in motorcycle but also in cabs and even private cars who approach them or roaming around their neighborhood.
It’s better to be prepared and alert all the time than sorry.
With the climate of fear and impunity hovering around the horizon, it isn’t safe for anyone to trust anybody not part of our household.
Even some of our colleagues will sometimes kiss us like Judas to ensure our downfall and imminent death.

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The boring FIDE world chess championship tussle between champion Magnus Carlsen and American challenger Fabiano Caruana in London will finally be decided in a tie-breaker on November 28, 2018.
Carlsen will play with the white pieces in the first game of rapid play-off after the drawing of lots is conducted.
The format will be: Best of four rapid games with 25 minutes for each player with an increment of 10 seconds after each move.
If still tied, they will play up to five mini-matches of two blitz games (five minutes for each player with a three-second increment).
If all five mini-matches are drawn, one sudden-death ‘Armageddon’ match will be played where White receives five minutes and Black receives four minutes. Both players will receive a three-second increment after the 60th move. In the case of a draw, Black will be declared the winner.
I won’t be surprised if on Wednesday, a new world chess champion will be crowned.

Apple Alag was PNP’s ‘small but terrible’

“Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.”
--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.”

Can Dorben Acap survive?

“When people are laughing, they're generally not killing one another.”
--Alan Alda

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- If it is true that those who wanted Iloilo City PO1 Dorben Acap dead were his own superiors, then he really has reason to panic and “feel helpless” as reported.
There is a popular saying in the underworld that if your bosses are your own “enemies” you can’t be rescued even by the ghosts in heaven.
Acap is reportedly under the watch list of those suspected to be engaged in illegal drugs in Western Visayas.
He denied it and swore he is not a rogue cop.
Acap has been talking to the media and even threatened to “tell everything” once he has fully recovered.
In a mob world, if the victim’s superiors ordered the hit and he survived, they usually consider the target as a “dead man talking” (Not to be confused with "dead man walking").

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Targets of assassination by a “big organization” (whatever it is) who survived usually are mowed down in the second or third attempt.
The harassment and assault, which have the “imprimatur” from “above”, will never stop.
This can be attested in the films made about mafia or big syndicates that exterminate their own men who either have rat against the group or have become “too big for their britches.”
Let’s hope this won’t happen to Acap especially if he is innocent and is actually a dedicated and honest police officer who leads a life as a role model to his children.
Acap is always presumed innocent until proven otherwise.
He could be a victim of mistaken identity or intrigues.
If Acap is really “notorious” whatever that means, he should be given his day in court and not subjected to gossip and summary execution.

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There was no evidence, however, that Philippine National Police (PNP) bigwigs in Western Visayas were behind the failed attempt to finish off Acap, who survived an ambush staged by motorcycle-riding gunmen while driving his car in Arevalo district June 26 afternoon.
It was not immediately established that the foiled attempt to kill Acap had something to do with President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s order to kill all drug traffickers, including village officials and “narco cops.”
Acap, however, insisted he was able to positively identify PO2 Melvin Mocorro as one of the three gunmen who was hit when he fired back.
Moccoro was placed under hospital arrest by Senior Insp. Mary Grace Borio, Arevalo police station chief, while confined for gunshot wounds at the Iloilo Mission Hospital in Jaro district, while Acap, assigned at Camp Martin Delgado Regional Personnel Holding and Accounting Unit, was treated at The Medical City in Molo district.
Both policemen will survive.

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It’s Russia versus Croatia and Uruguay versus France in the first waves of quarterfinals.
By the time this article comes out, we shall know the results of the remaining Round of 16 matches in the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia.
These matches are: Belgium versus Japan; Brazil versus Mexico; Sweden versus Switzerland; and Colombia versus England.
This year’s World Cup has been touted as “one of the best” if not the best because of the series of upsets and surprises, not to mention the quality of performances executed by both the highly touted and not-so-great soccer players.
We are near the semifinals and the finals and the world is going crazy.

Senior Supt. Tayaba and Iloilo’s war vs illegal drugs

“Being a good police officer is one of the most difficult, dangerous, idealistic jobs in the world.”
--Thomas Hauser

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- When he was the chief of the Iloilo City Mobile Group (ICMG) in the late 1990s, Senior Superintendent Marlon Tayaba, now Iloilo Police Provincial Office (IPPO) director, was one of the police officials in Western Visayas close to Iloilo reporters, especially the ladies.
Our Sun Star Iloilo reporters, Ednalyn Belonio-Diamante and Ruby Silbubrico, always had good police stories to write each time they interviewed Tayaba.
Tayaba, a member of the Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA) Class 1993, endeared himself to the press for being approachable and always available when sought for interview.
The popular police official from Pangasinan had served as the director of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) in Region 6 before being assigned as the commander of the Regional Public Safety Battalion (RPSB) of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) on January 2017.

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As the IPPO chief who led an operation that killed alleged Western Visayas drug lord Richard Prevendido at Landheights Subdivision in Balabago village in Jaro District on September 1, 2017, Tayaba’s name vaulted up as the “conqueror.”
When Prevendido’s sister, Brgy. Bakhaw, Mandurriao, Iloilo City Brgy. Captain Remia Prevendido-Gregori and her personal assistant, Analee Antapatria, were killed in a family-owned beach resort in San Joaquin, Iloilo on June 24, 2018, Tayaba told reporters the slain village chief was a “high-value target” for her alleged involvement in illegal drugs.
Tayaba claimed at least six unidentified armed men in red car assaulted the victims at around 4:30 o’clock in the afternoon.
As of this writing the culprits remained unidentified.

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Minutes after the foiled assassination of Police Officer 1 (PO1) Dorben Acap of the PNP Regional Personnel Holding and Accounting Unit (RPHAU) in Sitio Pajo in Barangay Dulonan, Arevalo in Iloilo City on June 26, 2018, PO2 Melvin Mocorro, who reportedly worked under Tayaba, was rushed to a hospital with gunshot wounds.
Mocorro was being suspected as one of those who ambushed Acap, who managed to fire back.
Acap has survived and vowed to reveal more details about the botched assassination once doctors clear him.
There was no immediate confirmation from probers about Mocorro’s involvement in the ambush, as of this writing.
We expect Tayaba to be the “man-of-the-hour” in the next several weeks and months when the IPPO and the Police Regional Office 6 (PRO-6) led by Chief Superintendent John Bulalacao step up their campaign against “persons of authority” (including cops, town and barangay officials) involved in illegal drug trafficking.
Tayaba and his team’s remarkable operations against dangerous personalities in illegal drugs trade have gained national attention.
Their blitzkrieg occurred days after President Rodrigo R. Duterte told Philippine councilors in a national convention in Iloilo City he wanted more traffickers of illegal drugs killed, including the “narco cops.”