821 surrenderers, zero deaths in first week of new ‘Tokhang’

Over 800 drug suspects have surrendered to authorities while no casualty was recorded on the first week of a bloodless “Oplan Tokhang” (knock and plead), the Philippine National Police (PNP) bared yesterday.

A consolidated report presented by Chief Superintendent John Bulalacao, newly-installed PNP spokesperson, to the PNP chief showed that from January 29 to February 1, a total of 821 drug suspects yielded to police in 2,127 Tokhang operations nationwide.

Even though Director General Ronald M. dela Rosa initially said that bloodshed will not be avoided in the resumption of Oplan Tokhang, Bulalacao took pride in the PNP’s current bloodless Tokhang operations, attributing it to a “more cooperative and responsive” public.

However, Bulalacao said that 46 drug suspects were killed in 3,251 anti-narcotics operations under the Oplan Double Barrel Reloaded conducted by the PNP since they returned to the national government’s war on drugs from Dec. 5, 2017 to Feb. 1, 2018. A total of 4,968 high-value targets (HVTs) have been arrested at the same time.

Bulalacao vowed to intensify their drug campaign efforts as a nationwide survey conducted by the Social Weather Station (SWS) in the fourth quarter of 2017 revealed that the number of drug addicts in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao have increased while those in the Metro Manila have decreased.

According to the survey released by SWS yesterday, there have been more drug addicts in Luzon as the data spiked by 11 percent, from 34 percent in September 2017 to 45 percent in December 2017.

Further, in Visayas, the number of drug addicts increased from 40 percent to 43 percent while in Mindanao, the data rose from 27 percent to 30 percent.

However, the presence of drug addicts in Metro Manila has decreased from 62 percent to 50 percent.

“We are glad that the presence of drug addicts in Metro Manila has dropped significantly,” Bulalacao said.

“But the survey about the increase of drug addicts in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, we take it as a challenge and we will intensify our anti-drugs efforts in the said areas,” he added.