CEBU CITY — Supt. Lito Patay officially assumed his post as the new director of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in Central Visayas (CIDG-7) on Wednesday here.
In his first conference as CIDG-7 chief, Patay said he has no plans of issuing new directives and the CIDG will continue to perform its regular duties.
“As chief of CIDG, it is not my job to make plans because the PNP (Philippine National Police) already has its plans, and the CIDG’s tasks are to apprehend wanted criminals, stop organized crime, and go after those with loose firearms, among many other law enforcement objectives,” Patay told reporters in Cebuano.
He also assured the public that under his command, CIDG operations would not become synonymous to his surname Patay, which literally means “death” in English.
“It’s not our job to kill. Our job is to arrest criminals, jail them, and prosecute them,” said Patay, who once headed the Batasan Police Station 6 in Quezon City.
Under Patay’s command, the Batasan Station was dubbed by Reuters in its report as “the deadliest police station” in Quezon City with 108 deaths in anti-drug operations from July 2016 to June 2017.
The new CIDG-7 chief, however, refused to comment on the controversial investigative report by Reuters that came out last December 19.
Patay, 44, a native of Enrique Villanueva in Siquijor, is a member of the Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA) Class 1997, along with Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) director Senior Supt. Royima Garma.
After graduation, Patay was assigned to the Provincial Mobile Group in Davao del Norte, where he also headed several police stations before his transfer to the Batasan Police Station in Quezon City in 2016.
In September 2017, Patay was promoted and reassigned to the CIDG in Central Luzon. (Luel Galarpe/PNA)
