ICPO verifying identities of youth rob gang members
The Iloilo City Police Office is verifying the identities of the other members of the True Brown Style, a youth gang whose members have been identified as the suspects in the series of robbery hold-up incidents in Iloilo City, victimizing taxi drivers.
Senior Supt. Dennis Basngi, city police director, said the group was formed only last year in the city.
Other True Brown Style groups are found in Metro Manila, although the gang reportedly started in the United States.
According to online sources, True Brown Style 13 is the “biggest, violent and number one street gang in the Philippines.”
Basngi said in Iloilo City, the group has currently 65 high school and college members, from only 35 original members from different private and public schools.
They can be easily identified because of the burn marks in their middle and little fingers, he said.
Basngi said the group turned out to be responsible in the three hold-up incidents victimizing cabbies in La Paz and Jaro districts, Iloilo City and in Tigbauan, Iloilo.
True Brown Style leader Alvin Dizon, a suspect in the robbery and killing of a taxi driver in Ledesco Village, La Paz, was arrested last week.
His arrest could shed light on the other similar incidents in the city, Basngi said.
He said Dizon was tested positive for illegal drug and this means, other gang members are drug users, too.
Basngi said they are also validating reports that there are two more TBS groups in the city. One is the TBS 27, whose members are into raping young women and the TBS 2, involved in “akyat bahay” activities.*
