The pandemic days have revived the old practice of bartering goods, especially when cash is short or not readily available.
The inventiveness to trade goods has been adopted by illegal drug sellers like what the Talisay City police has found out.
Police Major Jigger Gimeno, Talisay Police chief, said operatives arrested on Friday (Nov. 20) a suspected drug seller whose modus operandi entail exchanging shabu, which they later peddle, for items they have stolen from homes in the city.
They steal from homes fights cocks, bicycles, mobile phones and other items, which they trade for shabu in the Bacolod border area Sibucao in Barangay Banago.
They then sell the items to clients in the neighboring Barangay Zone 15 in Talisay City, Gimeno added.
The two suspects are Miko Jison and Carl Angelo Mongado alias “Pakoy”, both of Barangay Zone 4-A, who were arrested separately.
Jison was nabbed on Nov. 18 by virtue of a search warrant for a series of theft cases in the area, while Mongado, identified by the police as a street-level target, was apprehended the following day in a buy-bust operation.
The confirmation of the barter operation was made following the investigation of two suspects who were separately arrested recently by the Talisay PNP operatives.
While calling the case as “small-time operations”, Gimeno, however, said they continue to track down other suspects as other similar incidents have also been reported.
Gimeno reminded house owners to light up their surroundings and let their dogs loose at night and, possibly, install closed-circuit television to avert the incidence of theft. – MML
