Gov’t submitting itself to courts on EJKs – Roque
The administration is not sweeping under the rug the reports of extrajudicial killings allegedly carried out by a police unit in Quezon City, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said yesterday.
He also denied allegations the government is sanctioning the activities of the so-called Davao death squad whose operatives were reportedly involved in the killing of drug offenders in Metro Manila.
Criminal cases filed against the policemen involved have reached the Supreme Court and the Office of the Solicitor General has not intervened in the matter, Roque said.
“What I do know is there is a writ of amparo issued by the Supreme Court against the police station. So the response is: we are not taking it sitting down,” he said.
The fact that the Supreme Court issued a writ of amparo was proof that the government did not oppose the petition for the issuance of one.
Roque added that the Philippines continues to abide by its treaty obligation to protect and promote the right to life.
The government has addressed the concerns over extrajudicial killings and it recognizes its obligation “to investigate, punish, prosecute and give the victims adequate domestic legal remedy.”
Malacañang has repeatedly said it is not tolerating cases of abuses by policemen in relation to the administration’s campaign against illegal drugs.
“Yes, well, that is why if the investigation concludes that the police operation complained about was pursuant to the law, then the President will stand by the policemen,” he said.
On Wednesday, Philippine National Police chief Director Ronald dela Rosa said he was standing by the head of a secretive unit behind dozens of killings in the country’s war on drugs, saying officers fired only in self-defense and the death toll reflected the danger and scale of the narcotics problem. Dela Rosa was responding to a Reuters special report that spent four months examining killings by one group of policemen from or near Davao City, the hometown of President Duterte.
Dela Rosa said police Station 6 in Quezon City had Metro Manila’s most serious drug problem and he personally sent squad commander Lito Patay there because he was a “very professional” and “very dedicated” officer capable of dealing with it.
Patay handpicked and headed a unit of 10 men who called themselves the “Davao Boys,” which racked up the highest number of kills in Quezon City, a violent frontline in Duterte’s ferocious anti-narcotics campaign.
Police Station 6 officers killed 108 people in anti-drug operations from July 2016 through June 2017, the campaign’s first year, accounting for 39 percent of Quezon City’s body count, according to official crime reports analyzed by Reuters.
A majority of the killings were carried out by the squad run by Patay, who was reassigned to Quezon City a few weeks after Duterte unleashed his crackdown.
Patay has since been promoted to a crack investigative police unit based in Central Luzon.
Reacting to the statement of Roque that the Palace was only given an hour to respond to its report, a Reuters spokesperson said in a statement sent to The STAR last night: “The claim that Reuters gave the President’s office just an hour to respond is untrue. Reuters sent questions to the Presidents office a week before the story was published and the President’s office confirmed it had received them. Reuters followed that up with phone calls and emails, but the President’s office never responded to our questions.”