Mike apologizes to NCR cop chief

Rep. Michael Defensor personally apologized to Metro Manila Police director Chief Superintendent Edgar Aglipay for calling him a liar in the course of their much-publicized word war over the arrest of four women in a Quezon City bar recently.

"I am apologizing for calling the general a liar," Defensor said on the TV talk show Dong Puno Live aired over national television Wednesday night. He clarified that the four Quezon City cops lied when they claimed that he threatened them over the girls' arrest.

As this developed, the four girls in the controversy asked the Commission on Human Rights to investigate what they branded as "illegal arrests" conducted by the Quezon City policemen.

The women, Karen de Guzman, Rona Villareal, Georgilyn Feriles, and Jammer Adrias, said the police violated their rights when the lawmen arrested them while "dancing" inside Padi's Point bar and restaurant on Timog Avenue last Feb. 16., not in front of the establishment as claimed by the arresting team.

"It is very unfair to us. You do not know how this issue has adversely affected our lives," said one of the girls charged for vagrancy before the Quezon City Metropolitan Trial Court.

Defensor said the policemen "misquoted" him in the affidavits filed in the Office of the Ombudsman last Tuesday. "I never threatened them," he said. He also disputed claims that he uttered harsh words during their first confrontation at the solon's office last Feb. 20.

Defensor told Aglipay that it was a tabloid columnist, who happened to be at the solon's office, whom the complaining cops quoted.

Police Officers 1 Renato Jamor, Jonathan Hormadal and Allan Paul, Tesado charged Defensor of graft and light threats, in the Office of the Ombudsman for the Feb. 20 incident. Police Inspector Felicisima Bucu, chief of the Kamuning Police Women's and Children's Desk, supported the three officers' statements.

Aglipay, for his part, virtually sought a reconciliation with the solon. "We are leaving the court to decide. It is time we put a hat to this issue and start attending to other matters of importance. I ask the kind congressman to stop issuing statements and end all this," he said.

As these developed, Sen. Raul Roco filed a bill in the Senate seeking to decriminalize vagrancy, noting that it is a "victimless" crime and the offender often becomes the victim in the hands of unscrupulous policemen.

"The continuing prosecution of vagrancy fails to recognize the phenomenon of mass poverty affecting the country today. Vagrants are victims of the failure of our society to provide them with adequate social services, employment and a decent quality of life," Roco said.

Meanwhile, the Office of the Ombudsman started investigating the graft charges filed by four policemen against Defensor. Ombudsman Aniano Desierto ordered Pelagio Apostol, director of the Evaluation and Preliminary Investigation Bureau, to conduct an investigation of the complaint.

Quoting Apostol, he said the charges were "sufficient in form and substance to warrant the conduct of a preliminary investigation."