The practice has become so notorious the average Filipino is familiar with the term: hulidap. The word is a combination of the Filipino terms for arrest and holdup, and the perpetrators are law enforcers. A victim is marked, taken into custody and threatened with a frame-up, usually for illegal possession of drugs or guns, unless the person coughs up money.
In the latest cases, the favorite targets are people, mostly women, who visit relatives at the New Bilibid Prisons in Muntinlupa. This is according to documents from the Southern Police District, which is investigating reports that at least 25 cases of hulidap had NBP visitors as victims.
Last Monday, the head of the Regional Police Intelligence and Operating Unit or RPIOU in Metro Manila was sacked together with four members of the unit. Superintendent Richard de la Rosa was implicated in the kidnapping and shakedown of Amina Mangondato Tion, whose common-law husband is serving time at the NBP for drug trafficking. De la Rosa has denied the accusation.
Photographs submitted to the National Capital Region Police Office reportedly showed Tion being dragged by the RPIOU members from her house in Muntinlupa City into a black Toyota Fortuner with no license plates. Perhaps the growing number of motorists who have lost their Fortuners to carjackers should find out if the one used by the cops is their missing vehicle. After all, cops have been implicated not only in hulidap and kidnapping but also in carjacking.
Tion has reportedly been victimized twice. Of the 25 hulidap cases reported in the NBP, with 11 occurring in 2011 alone, three of the victims were reportedly kidnapped within the NBP reservation, two in residential areas nearby, and 12 in other parts of Muntinlupa City. SPD members are investigating if the suspects have accomplices within the NBP to mark targets. The report comes on the heels of an ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice into allegations of numerous anomalies in the Bureau of Corrections, which has jurisdiction over the NBP.
Tion at least is seeing her alleged tormentors placed under investigation. Relatives of inmates are vulnerable to shakedown, aware that their failure to give in to the demands of law enforcers, who could be in cahoots with prison personnel, could open their incarcerated loved ones to retaliation. The DOJ, which supervises national prisons, and the Department of the Interior and Local Government, which has jurisdiction over the police and local jails, should jointly put a stop to hulidap.