Breaking News

Osmena Seeks More Security Escorts

After Sniper Attack Killed Luzon Mayor

CEBU CITY – The local mayor in this central Philippine city sought additional police
security escorts after a lone sniper attack killed Tanauan City Mayor Antonio Halili,
authorities said Monday (July 2).

The Cebu City Police Office would not say whether it could grant the request of Mayor
Tomas Osmena for two more escort detail for him and his family, a spokesman told
reporters.

Halili was killed instantly from a single bullet from a rifle fired 180 meters away from
where he stood during the Monday morning flag-raising ceremony at the southern
Luzon town of Tanauan, in Batangas province.

Police said Halili, who remained under suspicion of being a drug lord protector, went
controversial for shaming suspected criminals who he paraded around town upon
arrest.
Osmena, 70, whose drug war had been patterned after Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s tough
hand on meth drugs in Davao, was named “drug lord protector” in March 2018 by then
Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre.

Osmena’s private war on drugs, carried out by 24 police officers in the so-called “Hunter
Team” in-between December 2004 and August 2005, left 77 men dead, according to
human rights advocates. Chief Inspector Arnel Banzon headed the team, to which
SPO1 Serafin Asingjo, PO4 Adonis Dumpit, and SPO4 Rex Campos belong.

Cebu City police director Melvin Gayotin authorized the operations, whose P25,000
($455) bounty for every meth drug seller neutralized, came from the mayor’s intelligence
fund as city chief executive.

An adhoc police-military advisory group in the Office of the President listed the mayor
as a “narco politician” who ran a clandestine network of rogue policemen protecting
drug lords in the city and nearby provinces.

Dumpit, a highly regarded police marksman and police escort and bodyguard of
Osmena for many years, was gunned down and killed in June 27 by a National Bureau
of Investigation (NBI) posse sent to investigate him on suspicions of being a drug lord
protector. Reputed to be “Osmena’s Dirty Harry,” he attacked the authorities first,
forcing them to return fire.

Vowing a nationwide campaign against politicians, businessmen, and police linked to

meth drug proliferation, Duterte won the presidency and assumed office in June 2016,
progressing onward with drug interdiction campaigns that left more than 3,900 people
dead.

Actor Clint Eastwood went popular with the no-mercy-for-criminals character that guns
down thieves and robbers who resisted arrest, in the 1972 movie “Dirty Harry.”

(With reports from PDEA and Interpol, FBI profiles, and foreign diplomatic missions).