11 months, 11 officers killed
Did Police Officer 3 Eugene Calumba pull out his gun as the motorcycle he was riding drew level with Barangay Tejero Councilman Jessielou Cadungog’s vehicle? The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) may have the answer to that, having retrieved security camera footage from the site of last Monday morning’s shooting in Cebu City. But as of Tuesday, the justice department agency didn’t reveal what it found out.
It did file a homicide complaint against Cadungog’s driver-bodyguard William Macaslang, who claimed he shot Calumba in self-defense after the side mirror showed the officer pulling out his firearm. A separate case is reportedly being prepared against Michael Banua, the police asset who drove the motorcycle Calumba was on.
For the most part, local government and police officials manage to work on the same side of criminal cases. Not in this one, though. Police officials said that Calumba, a newly promoted officer who had won awards, was conducting surveillance work on the illegal drug trade when Cadungog’s bodyguard shot him past 8 a.m. In an interview last Monday, Chief Supt. Debold Sinas even alleged it was Cadungog himself who fired the shots. “Do I have to spell it out?” he told reporters. Cadungog “provided the gun of the late SPOI Adonis Dumpit.”
Spelling it out might help. A joint team from the NBI and police shot Dumpit last July 27 in Bohol. The fact that the license for Dumpit’s gun was, indeed, in Cadungog’s name proves nothing nefarious. For that matter, the drugs the PNP and NBI claimed to have found in Dumpit’s possession are not categorical proof the officer was in the narcotics trade. Being dead, he can no longer answer that claim and defend himself.
Calumba and Dumpit are just two of 12 police and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency officers who were shot in Central Visayas in the last 11 months. Only one survived unharmed: his attackers struck as he was on his way home from a slain policeman’s wake. Incidentally, the last seven of these shootings took place in the first two months since Chief Superintendent Sinas assumed office as chief of the Central Visayas police. So the onus is on him to lean on investigators to unveil who was responsible for these attacks and what motivated them.
Until they do, they can hardly blame some members of the public for the suspicion that certain of these attacks were sanctioned by state actors to clean up the ranks without the necessary inconvenience of due process. Authorities may again blame this spate of attacks on illegal drug players. That, too, remains a possibility. The sooner the police and NBI crack these cases, the better for our law enforcers’ credibility. Again, the need for a mechanism to check against overzealous officers and abuse of power--something like the People’s Law Enforcement Board--reveals itself. Without it, the trust that law enforcers need will keep on being eroded.