2 Rizal cops tagged in 'salvage' try dismissed

CAMP VICENTE LIM, Laguna, Philippines  – Two Rizal policemen tagged in the attempted “salvaging” (summary execution) of a four-month pregnant woman  a witness in a robbery-extortion case against them  have been dismissed from the police service.

“They have no place in the police service,” Chief Superintendent Gil Meneses, Calabarzon police director, said yesterday.

Meneses vowed to institute dismissal proceedings against other men in uniform involved in criminal offenses.

Senior Superintendent Fausto Manzanilla, chief of the Regional Investigation and Detective Management Division, said the two policemen – PO1s Mario Natividad and Antenor Mariquit, of the Cainta police and Rizal provincial police, respectively – were dismissed based on the administrative complaint for two counts of grave misconduct filed by the victim, Glezarine Capistrano.

Manzanilla said lawyer Eugenio Mendoza, legal counsel of Mariquit and Natividad, filed a motion for reconsideration but the summary proceedings’ panel denied it.

Meneses said the two policemen are also facing criminal charges for kidnapping with frustrated murder and unintentional abortion before the sala of Judge Cynthia Mariño-Ricablanca of Regional Trial Court Branch 27 in Sta. Cruz, Laguna.

Records show that Capistrano was found unconscious in a ravine along Cavinti Road in Barangay Pinagsanjan, Pagsanjan, Laguna last year.

The two policemen, along with a certain Toto, who is still at large, allegedly seized her at the Hilltop in Taytay, Rizal and forced her into a white car driven by Mariquit, where she was gagged and tied up.

Upon reaching Pagsanjan town, she was repeatedly stabbed and shot in the thigh.

Thinking that she was already dead, the lawmen threw her into a ravine but she managed to untie herself and climbed up the cliff until passengers of a jeepney saw her and rushed her to the hospital.