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PROFILE

Dumpit double life ends,


but opens can of worms

TAGBILARAN - Suspected “hatchet man” of the Cebu City mayor,


Adonis Dumpit has served his country, caught between devotion to
duty as a law enforcer and loyalty to his economic patron – a
double life known only to a few, friends and acquaintances say.

A consistent service awardee at 55, a year short into


retirement, but running a clandestine drug enterprise in this
central Philippine city, Dumpit was killed on Wednesday (June
27) in a gun battle with police and justice department agents
sent to arrest him on charges of retailing metamphetamine drugs.

His death sparked a cross-agency investigation on police


officers and politicians suspected of coddling drug lords, says
lawyer Rennan Oliva, head of the National Bureau of
Investigation (NBI), a probe instrument under the Department of
Justice.

A senior police officer first grade (SPO1), a rank equivalent to


technical sergeant in the army, he was assigned in the regional
mobile force of the Philippine National Police in Bohol province
in 1989.

Quick to the draw with a pistol, a high-scoring shooter at 98


percent, and highly proficient with a rifle when re-assigned to
the Cebu City police in 1995, he gained the respect of both
peers and senior officers for his veritable performance.

He would chase purse snatchers, neighborhood thieves, and


jeepney robbers, winning the appreciation of men and women
across communities he has helped. Cebu gun club members idolize
him for his friendly manners and readiness to help them improve
their gun firing range ratings.

Colleagues described him as “cool under fire” at each shoot-out


with criminals. “Unlike most of us, Adonis could stare at death
in the eye,” recalls one of his supervisors, SPO4 Rex Campos.

He took the VIP security assignment for Mayor Tomas Osmena in


1998, when Alvin Garcia assumed the mayoralty. They became best
friends since then, according to SPO3 Serafin Asingjo.

Osmena became mayor again in 2001 and later gave him charge over
a squad of police officers in the newly formed Hunter Team
headed by Chief Inspector Arnel Banzon, in addition to his
duties as escort and bodyguard.

The Hunter Team has been suspected of involvement in 77


incidents of extrajudicial killings of suspected meth drug
sellers, according to local human rights advocates.

In-between December 2004 and August 2005, U.S. Embassy cable


reports to Washington raised suspicions that Osmena’s “personal
drug war” on meth traders protected three local and regional
drug lords – Peter Go Lim, Franz Sabalones, Rolando Espinosa,
and Jeffrey Diaz - who are known political patrons of Osmena.
A recent sworn statement by detained southern Luzon drug lord
Reynaldo Diaz alleged that the mayor had been receiving
“millions” in protection money from drug traders, and Dumpit
happened to be “one among the trusted bagmen,” who included
among them the mayor’s executive secretary Augustus Pe.

Giving life to the mayor’s directive to “eliminate drug sellers


being garbage of the metropolis,” Dumpit was credited with 14
“positive kills” on drug peddlers who resisted arrest, according
to officers familiar with the operations.

His team targeted notorious neighborhood thieves, street purse


snatchers, and jeepney robbery gangs for liquidation, toward a
contrived mechanics meant for propping the sagging political
image of the Osmenas, analysts at the U.S. Department of State
say.

Later charged with homicide charge for the 2004 death of robbery
suspect Ron Go, who he allegedly gunned down on the way to
surrender, Dumpit took to hiding for six years, gave up in
February 2010, and sentenced to six years.

After wrapping up his sentence on good behavior in a Leyte jail,


Osmena paid P250,000 for his provisional liberty bond, brought
him back to Cebu City on a private plane, and worked out his
reinstatement into the police after quashing the administrative
lapses of the complaint within days after President Rodrigo
Duterte assumed the presidency.

He and another police escort, who were suspected of protecting


drug lords, were ordered for Bohol police duty in August 2016,
along with known Osmena associates, Senior Superintendents
George Ylanan, Paul Labra, and Rex Derilo, who sent to faraway
Mindanao assignments.

The police regional office recalled him to Cebu in October 2017


after the mayor asked him to assume caretaker duties as barangay
captain in Ermita following the suspension of Felicisimo
Rupinta.

He was ordered to another Bohol duty on June 14, 2018. His


estranged wife claims he was assigned to Bohol to keep
investigators off the scent on the “principal protector” of the
underground multi-billion metamphetamine hydrochloride (poor
man’s cocaine) enterprise based in nearby Cebu.(With Interpol
reports, NBI summary profiles, and CIA Manila station inputs)

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