A pair of cops who have been accused of collaborating with narcos to land a drug plane have been cleared of wrongdoing by a police tribunal. In November of last year, Corporal Elmer Nah and PC Manuel Caliz were intercepted on the Southern Highway with over a hundred rounds of police issued ammunition in a vehicle.
8 months later, a police tribunal yesterday found them not guilty of the disciplinary charge of "Failure to Obey A Lawful Order". The acquittal came as the result of the testimony of another officer who testified to the tribunal that he had signed for those ammunition and had left them inside the vehicle.
But, the commissioner of police isn't happy about the outcome - he says the vehicle which the officer left the ammunition in - is a different vehicle from the one Nah and Caliz were caught in.
Today, via Zoom he expressed his disappointment:
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Certainly, I am disappointed in the outcome. I certainly was not expecting the outcome that I got yesterday. At the time had ammunitions in it, so I still cannot understand on what basis did the adjudicator decided that these two gentlemen were not guilty. Nonetheless, I have sent for the file, the notes of evidence and will have my legal team review the notes of evidence to see whether or not the adjudicator erred in his decision acquitting the two gentlemen. I will have to go through what the law allows me to do and see if in fact the adjudicator was right or he erred and if it is that we should find that he erred and if it is that we found that the adjudicator had erred, then the law does give the commissioner the power to either maintain or uphold the current decision, reduce or to up it."
Jules Vasquez
"Do you still have a strong belief as a law enforcement professional and as the most senior officer in the land that they should not have had those ammunitions in the vehicle at the time?"
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Certainly, if it is ammunition to go on a particular mission. When that mission of over you should return those ammunitions to the armoury and should not be kept with you carrying them around, even if it were that the officer who testify at the tribunal he signs for these ammunitions and left them inside a vehicle, the vehicle in which he alleged he had left the ammunitions are not the same vehicle are not the same in which the ammunitions were found. So the hell did the ammunitions got from one vehicle to the other vehicle. Certainly, these officers had to move it from one vehicle to the next."
Williams stressed that both lawmen remain on interdiction pending criminal charges. As for the other cops facing disciplinary charges, those cases are still before a tribunal.
