(Eagle News)—–Videos taken during the police raid in a Makati bar on Thursday, Aug. 16, showed National Capital Region Police Office policemen asking the three lawyers who were arrested for alleged obstruction of justice who they were representing, but they could not give clear answers.
According to Senator Panfilo Lacson, the videos also showed one of the policemen explaining to the lawyers that they were taking videos without prior authorization, which meant this constituted obstruction of justice.
The lawyers, he said, said they were representing the bar’s owners but did not give names.
According to Lacson, the three lawyers also may have contaminated evidence as they touched items “as if doing their own search without authority,” and took pictures, based on the police report.
“Let us not be too hasty or harsh in condemning the NCRPO without getting their side of the story. There is such a thing as presumption of regularity,” Lacson said.
Lenie Rocha, Jan Vincent Soliven and Romulo Alarcon were detained for “intimidating” the police conducting a search at TIME in Manila bar.
The police had been armed with a search warrant at that time.
The three lawyers have been ordered released by the Makati Prosecutors Office but pending further probe into the constructive possession of illegal drugs also filed against them by the police.
They were also charged for resistance and disobedience, obstruction of justice and for violating an ordinance prohibiting persons from crossing a police line.