Palace defends police in arrest of lawyers

Malacañang on Monday backed the decision of the cops to arrest three lawyers accused of interfering in the police search of a raided bar last week.

Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said the three lawyers needed a refresher in criminal law even as he asked the police to show "extreme patience" with young and "overzealous" members of the legal profession. 

Lawyers Lenie Rocel Rocha, Jan Vincent Soliven, and Romulo Bernard Alarkon were arrested last Thursday at the Time in Manila bar in Barangay Poblacion, Makati City.

The Southern Police District said the three, who claimed to be lawyers of one of the bar's owners, entered the premises during the police's implementation of a search warrant, "took several pictures and videos of the scene" and "intimidated the members of the searching team without proper and prior coordination."

A police raid at the bar recently led to the arrest of 31 employees suspected of supplying and distributing illegal drugs and the rounding up of 125 people.

Allegedly recovered from the bar were a few pieces of alleged ecstasy tablets, several plastic sachets of alleged cocaine and shabu, and drug paraphernalia.

Roque questioned the presence of the lawyers during the implementation of the search warrant issued by the court.

"Lawyers have absolutely no involvement in an ongoing police investigation. Their role is when there is already a pending action in the Prosecutor’s Office, if there is anything that was wrong in the police investigation, then they can alleged this either in the determination of probable cause or in the trial itself," the Palace official said at a news conference.

He said a lawyer can observe but cannot interfere in an ongoing police investigation.

"Take note in the first operation, it yielded positive for drugs and it was closed by the Makati City government. But they wanted to open apparently the vault, so they got even a search warrant," Roque, a former law professor, said.

"And the information I got was the lawyers were preventing the policemen from going to an upper floor where the vault was and obviously they had the right to go to the upper floor because they had a validly issued search warrant."

Roque said the lawyers committed obstruction of justice and opened themselves to administrative sanctions for possible violation of the Code of Professional Responsibility.

"When you prevent a police from affecting the service of a search warrant, in my mind that’s really obstruction of justice," he said.

The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) has launched an investigation into the arrest saying it was "deeply alarmed" by the incident.

"It shows an utter disrespect not only of the law profession but also of constitutionally enshrined rights. It emboldens other law enforcement agencies and puts at risk ordinary Filipino citizens," CHR spokesperson Jacqueline De Guia said on Saturday.

She said the lawyers were only doing their jobs.

In defense of the Makati police, National Capital Region Police Office Chief Police Director Guillermo Eleazar said the three lawyers refused to identify themselves and respond to police's query while authorities were conducting the search. — RSJ, GMA News