Kinder, gentler?
At dawn last Saturday in North Cotabato, nine suspected members of a drug trafficking ring were killed in what lawmen described as a shootout with a combined police and military team.
The nine turned out to be members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, so Malacañang has ordered an investigation. But at this point I’m going by the initial report that it was a drug operation that turned violent.
In Tondo, Manila at around the same time on Saturday, four men on motorcycles gunned down a policeman who was recently reinstated despite being tagged as a drug suspect.
Over the weekend, four drug suspects were shot dead by police in separate incidents in Cavite. Two others were shot dead in Bulacan on Saturday.
That’s 16 drug suspects killed in just two days. We can put things in perspective: 32 drug suspects were arrested over the weekend in Cavite. Still, 16 is a lot of dead bodies. Are drug killings again on the rise? And is there less public tolerance for the killings?
The answer to the second question, as far as I can surmise, is no. As to the first question, nine is a high death toll for a single drug bust, but if it doesn’t become a regular thing, the public tends to ignore a death or two in a single incident. Such killings have been going on for decades.
* * * When Oscar Albayalde was picked as the new head of the Philippine National Police, I wrote that we would probably be seeing a kinder, gentler PNP and drug war.
Albayalde, after all, sacked nearly the entire Caloocan police force following the brutal executions of teenage drug suspects in the city.
He grinned when I asked him if I was just imagining that the drug war had become less bloody. He was our guest on the premiere episode of “The Chiefs,” broadcast the other night at 8:30 when Cignal TV launched One News (Channel 8, 250 on HD).
The rules of engagement, he told us, are “paramount, and respect for human rights is one of them.”
Maybe an off-the-record interview with Albayalde would give deeper insights regarding this brutal war, although he was forthright enough in his recorded answers. And he deftly parried questions that would have had him criticize the performance of his military academy mistah, Ronald dela Rosa, who recommended him as the next PNP chief.
Albayalde would only concede that there had been “lapses” in the conduct of the war, for which he has slapped penalties on several abusive cops.
* * * Police have been killing drug suspects decades before tokhang became a household word. Why else do you think “salvaging” or retrieval has denoted execution in this country since the Marcos regime? The anti-drug campaign under President Duterte stands out only because of the sheer number of suspects slain in such a short period.
Even the brutality is not new. Suspects used to be garroted with a vehicle fan belt twisted around a police nightstick. The “mummy” treatment, using a plastic bag over the head, has also been around for some time. Burning bodies to ashes gets rid of the corpus delicti, although the burning takes a long time and the stench could attract attention. So killers place the corpse in a drum, pour in concrete and toss the package into the sea. Relatives of desaparecidos should try looking for such drums lying in the bottom of Manila Bay.
But Albayalde seems aware of the limits of short cuts to law enforcement. He reassures the public that respect for human rights is being inculcated among PNP personnel. He announced that he would comply with a Supreme Court order for the submission of case files on 3,806 drug killings under Duterte.
At the end of 18 months when Albayalde retires from the police service, he hopes to leave behind a more disciplined PNP.
Will the discipline mean curbing the excesses of the war on drugs? When President Duterte appointed Albayalde, he decribed the new PNP chief as “strict” and “the right guy” for the job. Duterte’s marching order was simple, Albayalde said: “do what is right.”
During our interview, Albayalde touched on the reforms being initiated, from recruitment and training to improvements in facilities for scientific criminal investigation. Duterte has given him a free hand to reorganize the PNP, and so far, Albayalde says he has received no request from politicians for the assignment or promotion of any police official.
Albayalde is grateful that even if he is from Pampanga, not Davao, and has never been assigned to Mindanao, he was picked for the top PNP post. Dela Rosa’s endorsement was a key factor, but Duterte stressed that Albayalde owed his promotion to no one, and that he got the job on sheer credentials.
He seems to consider Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former PNP chief, as a role model. Albayalde agrees with Lacson’s belief that you can’t impose national discipline without a disciplined police force.
Ping Lacson, however, was feared not just for going after “kotong” or extorting cops and ordering PNP personnel to lose their beer bellies. Like Davao’s Dirty Rody, Lacson built a reputation for “neutralizing” troublemakers. Among the most controversial, before he became PNP chief, was the neutralization of 11 members of the Kuratong Baleleng crime gang in Quezon City.
The Kuratong’s first leader, incidentally, was Octavio Parojinog Sr., father of Ozamiz City mayor Reynaldo Parojinog Sr., who was killed together with 15 relatives and security aides in a police drug raid in July last year.
The Parojinogs were the second alleged narco family to suffer a bloody police raid, after the Espinosas of Albuera, Leyte.
Crime gangs aren’t called “organized” for nothing; they know enough not to get caught in the act of selling or possessing illegal drugs – a requirement for criminal charges to stick. Albayalde is aware of the limitations set by law in conducting drug busts.
What’s a PNP chief to do, when presented with a narco list of notorious drug dealers who are also notoriously adept at avoiding criminal indictments?
The PNP has filed 608 human rights cases against its members so far – “a good indication,” Albayalde said, “that we are not tolerating any wrongdoing.”
But he also added, “What happens on the ground if there is danger on the part of the operatives is something that we cannot control.”
We haven’t seen the last of the bloody police encounters with crime rings. But so far Albayalde has been making the right noises. Under his watch, we might yet see a touch of humanity in this ugly war.