Baloyo being transferred to Pampanga jail from Bilibid -BuCor

Alleged "ninja cop" Police Major Rodney Raymundo Baloyo IV is now being transferred to a jail in Pampanga after the Senate allowed him to be moved out of the New Bilibid Prison, the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) said Friday.

BuCor spokesperson Gabriel Chaclag said the transfer of Baloyo from Bilibid, which is in Muntinlupa City, to the San Fernando City District Jail started at past 3 p.m. Friday.

"Subject PDL (person deprived of liberty) is being escorted now by BuCor SWAT personnel and well coordinated with the PNP and BJMP authorities," Chaclag told reporters at 5:45 p.m.

Baloyo has been detained at Bilibid since October 2019 after being cited in contempt by Senate committees over his evasive answers during a hearing on alleged drug recycling among police officers.

The Senate allowed Baloyo to be transferred this week, after his mother and his wife pleaded to move the police official closer to home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Senator Richard Gordon.

Last January, prosecutors indicted Baloyo and 11 other policemen for misappropriation of confiscated drugs, planting of evidence, delay and bungling in the prosecution of drug cases over a 2013 anti-drug police operation in Mexico, Pampanga.

The police officers allegedly failed to declare the full quantity of the drugs they seized during the operation and let an arrested suspect go for P55 million and an SUV.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Baloyo and his men declared only 36.60 kilograms of some 200 kilograms of shabu that they seized, and that some of them also failed to account for a seized vehicle.

The police officers were also accused of arresting and implicating the wrong person.

Though the drugs were supposedly confiscated from one Johnson Lee, the officers brought one Ding Wenkun to court, according to the DOJ. Wenkun was eventually cleared of charges.

Prosecutors also endorsed their findings of graft against former police chief Police General Oscar Albayalde to the Office of the Ombudsman. -MDM, GMA News