NORTH COTABATO, Philippines - The police on Friday again scored in its continuing crackdown on circulation of illegal drugs in North Cotabato’s capital Kidapawan City.
Operatives of the Kidapawan City police arrested in a dragnet 46-year-old Marites Parba, a known peddler of methamphetamine hydrochloride, most known as shabu, and whose network involves clandestine vendors operating near school campuses.
Parba was frisked and immediately cuffed by agents while in the act of turning over to policemen, disguised as drug dependents, P500 worth of shabu at her hideout in Barangay Lanao southwest of Kidapawan City.
The raiding team also searched but failed to locate in the same barangay an equally notorious shabu trafficker named Alvin, a known cohort of Parba.
A total of 37 drug traffickers have been arrested in one raid after another in Kidapawan City and nearby North Cotabato towns in the past three months, after the provincial police re-intensified its efforts to curb the drug problem besetting the local communities.
North Cotabato’s provincial police director, Superintendent Alex Tagum, and his men had even dismantled seven drug dens protected by armed groups during the period.