Cabanatuan City – – “Don’t shoot policemen. We are trained to defend ourselves.”
Thus, said PSup Ponciano Zafra on the killing of a wanted “big time drug supplier” who shot it out with the arresting policemen around 10:30 in the morning of June 5 at Purok Uno, Barangay Dalampang. Around P1 Million worth of shabu and a caliber .45 pistol were recovered.
Killed in an armed-encounter was Felicito Barcoma y Tanjosay, 44, of Purok Apitong, Barangay Poblacion, Gen. Natividad, NuevaEcija.
Zafra revealed Barcoma was about to be served a warrant of arrest for possession of illegal drugs when he (Barcoma) tried to elude arrest and fired at the arresting cops.
The Warrant of Arrest was issued by Judge Felizardo Montero, Jr of the Regional Trial Court Branch 29, Cabanatuan City.
“Nang a-arestuhin namin siya, bigla siyang tumakbo sa bukid at pinutukan niya kami,” said Zafra who personally led the operation against Barcoma.
Recovered from Barcoma were 4 “bulging sachets” of shabu and a Colt caliber .45 pistol. Also confiscated from the Mazda Hatchback car driven by Barcoma were 6 sachets of shabu with a total weight of 60.23 grams.
The street value of seized drugs is around P1 Million. (A gram of shabu is usually repacked into more than 35 pieces of P500 “retail-sized” plastic sachets.)
Zafra also disclosed that Barcoma supplies shabu in Talavera and San Jose towns and in this city.
“He is very elusive. He only stops for a few minutes to deliver shabu to his network of pushers here and in other towns. But our weeks of intelligence work paid-off. We got him at Barangay Dalampang where he was about to deliver (illegal drugs) to one of our informers,” Zafra said.
“We are focused on stopping the entry of drugs into the city. Barcoma gets his shabu from Manila” also said Zafra.
In his almost 11 months as this city’s chief of police, Zafra has jailed almost 400 pushers and drug addicts. /By Nelson Bolos