Rapiz slapped with 90-day preventive suspension over illegal search
‘Ghosts’ from the past eventually caught up with Iloilo’s controversial top cop, Police Chief Inspector Leroy Rapiz.
This, as immediate investigation was ordered in relation to his discharge of official police duties deemed as acts of grave misconduct or malfeasance in office and gross incompetence.
Particular of the complained acts of Rapiz was his practice of “stop and frisk operation” and again as in the past instances, venue was still a public place in Sara, Iloilo.
Months back Rapiz was subject of an emotional privilege speech by Board Member Jeneda Salcedo who called him “Berdugo” of Northern Iloilo. It was also the issue of illegal search and Rapiz checkpoints that merited that outcry.
Now pending the investigation of these entirely new set of complaints, Chief Inspector Rapiz is up for a 90-day preventive suspension.
And such, the Iloilo Provincial Internal Affairs Service (IPIAS) of the Philippine National Police (PNP) justified as necessary “since the charge is serious or grave and the evidence of guilt is strong…”
In a 4-paged IPIAS report obtained by The News Today (TNT), used as main issue against Rapiz was the longtime complaint of illegal search.
While previous cases failed to nail down Rapiz and even backed by Governor Niel Tupas Sr., latest complaints from private citizens in Northern Iloilo managed to get him suspended and investigated.
It was also a “motu propio investigation” done by the IPIAS concluded last Monday, January 19th.
“The freedom from illegal search is every person’s right enshrined in the Constitution. One’s privacy is inviolable if no cause for suspicion arises. PNP members, especially the officers must know the law as they are charged to uphold and enforce the same. As PNP officials, they must also be knowledgeable of the procedure in conducting searches and the consequences for the violation of this time-honored constitutional right,” excerpts of the report went.
IPIAS pre-charge Investigator Police Officer III Vicente Silla made the report as approved by Police Superintendent Bernardo Espura.
Superintendent Espura is officer-in-charge of the Regional Internal Affairs Service.
“The acts of Major Rapiz in bringing 20-30 armed men in combat uniforms and conducting a stop and frisk operation in the streets and terminal of Sara, Iloilo without any probable cause for suspicion whatsoever, exhibit his intense disrespect for the law and his ignorance of the workings of the law and the significance of human rights,” the Decision continued. “It can be adduced from the acts of PCInsp. Leroy Rapiz that he honestly believes that as a police officer, he can virtually rummage through the persons of the Complainants and the persons of everybody whenever he wishes without considering their constitutionally-founded rights.”
Initial investigation of the IPIAS established that Chief Inspector Rapiz did police search operations that “…cannot be considered as a valid and legal warrantless search.”
Grave Misconduct and gross incompetence, the IPIAS stated, “are readily apparent from the acts and demeanor of Major Leroy Rapiz.”