Text message leads cops to marijuana shipment

A text message led police Wednesday to a shipment of 30 kilos of dried marijuana leaves with a street value of P1 million loaded in a passenger bus in Benguet.

Cordillera police director Chief Superintendent Eugene Martin said the seizure of the marijuana shipment was a product of Letter of Instruction Banat urging citizens to send information regarding illegal activities to the police.

Martin said SPO3 Dencio Amponget Dayao, an intelligence operative of the Regional Mobile Group received a text message Wednesday regarding a shipment of dried marijuana leaves on board a BCMPCI passenger bus (AYD 854) plying the Bakun-Baguio City route.

Joint elements of the RMG, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and Benguet police conducted a checkpoint operations at the bus terminal along Camp Dado Dangwa in La Trinidad and flagged down the mentioned passenger bus at about 3:10 p.m. Wednesday.

The team confiscated two brown cartoons with “No­noy Bravo” markings which yielded at least 10 bricks of marijuana neatly wrapped in a newspaper and brown masking tapes. – Non Alquitran and Artemio Dumlao