UPDATED REPORT

Cebu Mayor Behind Dumpit

Assignment in Tagbilaran

TAGBILARAN – Cebu City Mayor Osmena peddled influence to have

SPO1 Adonis Dumpit re-assigned in this central Philippine city
after the officer developed psychological instability from
probable drug addiction, his common-law wife says.
“He would burst into tantrums every now and then,” says Maria
Ella Amores, raising hints that Adonis was suffering from
depression accompanying a worsening addiction to meth drugs.

“My husband felt bad about his being used, and how he was
discarded when he outlived his usefulness,” she says, recalling
him telling her that he felt sore about a misunderstanding with
Osmena.

The Cebu City mayor and wife Margarita were afraid that Dumpit’s
psychological instability and emotional outbursts would affect
the family home in Guadalupe, according to members of the
mayor’s household staff.

In and around Dumpit’s home, residents complained over many of

the officer’s angry outbursts that affected the San Isidro
barangay neighborhood where he lived. “He would discharge his
firearm,” village chairman Fausto Budlong says, adding “not five
times but many, the most recent incident about his cat being ran
over by a passing vehicle.”

The officer was excited about meeting policemen-friends in the

advance party of President Rodrigo Duterte, who was to arrive
here on Thursday, says his long-time colleague, PO3 Romeo
Batuhan.

He was gunned down and killed by a posse of police and agents

from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) before he was
able to attend the briefing.

Suspicions of a rub-out and overkill surfaced on Thursday as the

remains of the policeman arrived in Cebu City.

The NBI operation on Dumpit occurred within days after he told

other police officers he was to seek help from Manila colleagues
in clearing him from alleged involvement with Osmena as a
suspected drug lord protector.

“The death of Jaguar [Jeffrey Diaz] stemmed from assassination,”

his classmates in police training batch say, raising hints that
Jaguar was “silenced” by police officers who wanted to prevent
him from squealing on who the top drug lord protector has been
and killed him in Manila in June 2016.
The woman who gave information about Jaguar’s whereabouts, Anna
Lou Llaguno, was gunned down in October 4, 2016, police records
show. She was the common-law wife of self-confessed drug lord
Kerwin Espinosa, son of Leyte provincial drug kingpin, Albuera
town mayor Rolando Espinosa, Sr.

The gunman and motorcycle-rising look-out, Richard Singco Jungoy

and Michael Lendio, respectively, who attacked Llaguno, were
shot dead in separate gun attacks on October 18, 2016.

“I just hope trouble won’t pursue me into retirement,” a

retirement-bound police training classmate of Dumpit quoted him
as saying.

Throughout the 35 years in police service, he has been caught

between devotion to duty as a law enforcer and loyalty to his
economic patron, Mayor Osmena.

The mayor gave him financial allowances to help him make both
ends meet as a breadwinner for two families: Gabuya’s in Cebu
City and Amores in Tagbilaran.

A consistent service awardee at 55, a year short into

retirement, but running a clandestine drug enterprise in this
central Philippine city, Dumpit was killed on Wednesday (June
27) in a gun battle with police and justice department agents
sent to investigate him on suspicions of retailing
metamphetamine drugs, commonly called meth or “poor man’s
cocaine, and coddling meth sellers.

A senior police officer first grade (SPO1), a rank equivalent to

technical sergeant in the army, he was assigned in the regional
mobile force of the Philippine National Police in Bohol province
in 1989.

Quick to the draw with a pistol, a high-scoring shooter at 98

percent, and highly proficient with a rifle when re-assigned to
the Cebu City police in 1995, he gained the respect of both
peers and senior officers for his veritable performance.

He would chase purse snatchers, neighborhood thieves, and

jeepney robbers, winning the appreciation of men and women
across communities he has helped. Cebu gun club members idolize
him for his friendly manners and readiness to help them improve
their gun firing range ratings.

Colleagues described him as “cool under fire” at each shoot-out

with criminals. “Unlike most of us, Adonis could stare at death
in the eye,” recalls one of his supervisors, SPO4 Rex Campos.

He took the VIP security assignment for Mayor Tomas Osmena in

1998, when Alvin Garcia assumed the mayoralty. They became best
friends since then, according to SPO3 Serafin Asingjo.

Osmena became mayor again in 2001 and later gave him charge over
a squad of police officers in the newly formed Hunter Team
headed by Chief Inspector Arnel Banzon, in addition to his
duties as escort and bodyguard.

The Hunter Team has been suspected of involvement in 77

incidents of extrajudicial killings of suspected meth drug
sellers, according to local human rights advocates.

In-between December 2004 and August 2005, U.S. Embassy cable

reports to Washington raised suspicions that Osmena’s “personal
drug war” on meth traders protected three local and regional
drug lords – Peter Go Lim, Franz Sabalones, Rolando Espinosa,
and Jeffrey Diaz - who are known political patrons of Osmena.

A recent sworn statement by detained southern Luzon drug lord

Reynaldo Diaz alleged that the mayor had been receiving
“millions” in protection money from drug traders, and Dumpit
happened to be “one among the trusted bagmen,” who included
among them the mayor’s executive secretary Augustus Pe.

“His patron is inevitably uneasy about Dumpit’s knowing too

much,” Diaz last week told a visiting U.S. political consul.

Giving life to the mayor’s directive to “eliminate drug sellers

being garbage of the metropolis,” Dumpit was credited with 14
“positive kills” on drug peddlers who resisted arrest, according
to officers familiar with the operations.

His team targeted notorious neighborhood thieves, street purse

snatchers, and jeepney robbery gangs for liquidation, toward a
contrived mechanics meant for propping the sagging political
image of the Osmenas, analysts at the U.S. Department of State
say.

Later charged with homicide charge for the 2004 death of robbery
suspect Ron Go, who he allegedly gunned down on the way to
surrender, Dumpit took to hiding for six years, gave up in
February 2010, and sentenced to six years.

After wrapping up his sentence on good behavior in a Leyte jail,

Osmena paid P250,000 for his provisional liberty bond, brought
him back to Cebu City on a private plane, and worked out his
reinstatement into the police after quashing the administrative
lapses of the complaint within days after President Rodrigo
Duterte assumed the presidency.

He and another police escort, who were suspected of protecting

drug lords, were ordered for Bohol police duty in August 2016,
along with suspected Osmena cohorts in the Cebu City Police
Office, Superintendents George Ylanan, Paul Labra, and Rex
Derilo, who sent to faraway Mindanao assignments, aside from
Superintendents Marvin Sanchez and Teofilo Siclot, who were
deployed to Northern Luzon. Supt. Rodolfo Albotra was reassigned
to Butuan, in the Caraga Region.

The police regional office recalled him to Cebu in October 2017

after the mayor asked him to assume caretaker duties as barangay
captain in Ermita following the suspension of Felicisimo
Rupinta.

He was ordered to another Bohol duty on June 14, 2018. His

estranged wife claims he was assigned to Bohol to keep
investigators off the scent on the “principal protector” of the
underground, widespread P5-billion-a-year meth drug enterprise
in nearby Cebu. (With Interpol reports, NBI summary profiles,
and CIA Manila station inputs)