Bulacan newsman seeks PNP chief’s intervention after police raid in home

PHILIPPINE National Police (PNP) chief General Camilo Pancratius Cascolan was asked on Thursday to order an investigation into the alleged “gestapo-like” raid by policemen into the home of newsman Orlan Mauricio in Malolos City, Bulacan.

The fully armed policemen, believed to be from the Bulacan Provincial Police Office, donning bullet proof vests but were not wearing police uniforms, reportedly barged into Mauricio’s residence, purportedly in search of guns allegedly owned by his son who is no longer living with him.

“Mauricio said at about 5 p.m. on Wednesday, more than 20 raiders claiming to be members of the Bulacan PNP, with two policewomen who allegedly acted as videographers, none of them wearing police uniform, all heavily armed and wearing bulletproof vest and bandanas, forcibly entered his home without identifying themselves and their mission,” said Romie Evangelista, Mauricio’s colleague at the Bulacan Press Club.

Evangelista, a former reporter of the Manila Standard and a former president of the Camp Crame-based PNP Press Corps, said the raid was backed by a search warrant issued by a court in Bulacan.

“We were herded for two hours and held incommunicado, seized our phones, with guns pointed at me and my wife. It’s only [then] that they showed me the search warrant, after searching our home for almost two hours,” Evangelista quoted Mauricio as saying. Mauricio claimed the raiding team only showed the warrant after barangay officials, who were summoned by their neighbors, arrived at their residence.

The National Press Club (NPC) through its president Paul Gutierrez, denounced the raid, hinting that it was a police raid “orchestrated by certain ranking provincial officials whom he got entangled with because of his news reports.”