By Anthony Giron
CAMP GEN. PANTALEON GARCIA, IMUS, Cavite – Another drug suspect was reported killed after he resisted arrest and decided to shoot it out with authorities in upland Silang municipality.
The Cavite Police Provincial Office (PPO) identified the latest fatality as Michael Benito, 35, a jobless resident of Barangay Balubad I, Silang.
A report from the Silang police said that Benito died on-the-spot from bullet wounds sustained in an exchange of gunfire with the local drug enforcement unit officers in Balubad I at 10:30 p.m. Thursday.
The team was forced to shoot Benito when he fired his gun after a transaction with a buyer, who was an undercover policeman, he had sold P1,000-worth of shabu to.
The buyer was being backed up by the team at the time of the drug transaction,
Recovered at the scene were Benito's cailber .22 Magnum homemade revolver with a shell and five bullets in its barrel, a coin purse with eight sachets containing shabu weighing .64 grams and worth about P8,000, the P1,000 buy-bust bill and his personal money bills amounting to P90 (one P50 and two P20s).
Major Resty E. Soriano, Silang police chief, reported that based on intelligence information, the suspect was a "runner/courier" of drug peddlers from adjacent Blessed Ville Subdivision in Barangay Sampaloc II, Dasmarinas City.
The police conducted the buy-bust operation after Benito was tipped off as selling shabu in Balubad I area.
"The neutralization of the suspect (Benito) will significantly decrease the supply of illegal drugs in adjacent areas of Balubad I," Soriano said in his signed report to Colonel Marlon R. Santos, Cavite PPO director.
PPO reports showed that Benito was the 11th suspect who died in police anti-drug encounters in 11 days since January 27.
The reports revealed that two drug suspects were killed by police in an encounter in Dasmarinas on January 27, one in Imus on Jan. 28 one also in Silang on January 31,
one each in Rosario (also called Salinas) Cavite City and also Imus on February 3 and two in Bacoor City on Feb, 4 and one in General Trias.
The PPO said that all the suspects died after resisting the officers in buy-bust operations.
The Districts of Bacoor, Dasmarinas and Imus, Cavite City, and the municipalities of Rosario and Silang are some of the areas in the province being watched closely in terms of drugs by the PPO and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), reports showed. .
These areas have the most numbers of arrests and bulk of shabu seizures in the last two years, it was gathered.
In 2019, the PPO reported that a total of 44 resisting drug suspects have died in encounters with police in Cavite's eight districts.
The PPO also reported that a total of 7,835 drug personalities (pushers and users) were arrested in 3,703 anti-drug operations that have been conducted in upland and lowland districts of the province in 2019.