4/16/2021 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly Worse, the manner by which the allegedly seized drugs were handled after their confiscation, and while in transit to the barangay hall, remains unaccounted for. All that was alleged was that PO3 Temporal kept them himself. This Court has previously decried police officers' plain claims of having close, personal custody of allegedly seized items in transit. This lone assertion, as pointed out in People v. Dela Cruz,[43] is "fraught with dangers," "reckless, if not dubious," and "a doubtful and suspicious way of ensuring the integrity of the items": The circumstance of PO1 Bobon keeping narcotics in his own pockets precisely underscores the importance of strictly complying with Section 21. His subsequent identification in open court of the items coming out of his own pockets is self-serving. The prosecution effectively admits that from the moment of the supposed buy-bust operation until the seized items' turnover for examination, these items had been in the sole possession of a police officer. In fact, not only had they been in his possession, they had been in such close proximity to him that they had been nowhere else but in his own pockets. Keeping one of the seized items in his right pocket and the rest in his left pocket is a doubtful and suspicious way of ensuring the integrity of the items. Contrary to the Court of Appeals' finding that PO1 Bobon took the necessary precautions, we find his actions reckless, if not dubious. Even without referring to the strict requirements of Section 21, common sense dictates that a single police officer's act of bodily-keeping the item(s) which is at the crux of offenses penalized under the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, is fraught with dangers. One need not engage in a meticulous counter-checking with the requirements of Section 21 to view with distrust the items coming out of PO1 Bobon's pockets. That the Regional Trial Court and the Court of Appeals both failed to see through this and fell — hook, line, and sinker — for PO1 Bobon's avowals is mindboggling. Moreover, PO1 Bobon did so without even offering the slightest justification for dispensing with the requirements of Section 21.[44] Another glaring failure was the absence of representatives from the media and the National Prosecution Service during the physical inventory and photographing of the seized items. The prosecution gave no excuse to justify their absence, either. Yet, worse, the prosecution did not even show that the police officers exerted any effort to call in these representatives. The officers had sufficient time to secure their presence, since a surveillance operation had been conducted prior to the buy-bust operation. By then, the necessary arrangements could have been made. Finally, this Court emphasizes that in cases involving violations of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act, the prosecution cannot merely rely on the oft-cited presumption of regularity in the performance of official duty to justify noncompliance with the law's mandate. The presumption of innocence enjoyed by the accused stands so long as https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/66117 7/12