Preventing another misencounter

The President and commander-in-chief attributed it to Murphy’s Law. Still, the deadly misencounter between Army soldiers and policemen in Samar last Monday might have been avoided if the two organizations had properly coordinated their operations in the same area.

Relatives and friends are in mourning over the deaths of six members of the 805th Regional Mobile Force Battalion of the Philippine National Police. The six, together with several other PNP members, were operating in Barangay San Roque in Sta. Rita town when bullets rained on them.

The gunfire – from M4 assault rifles and a sniper rifle – came from members of the Philippine Army’s 87th Infantry Battalion. Armed Forces of the Philippines officials have disarmed 16 members of the battalion who figured in the firefight and confined them to their headquarters pending the joint investigation of the incident by the AFP and PNP.

Initial reports said both groups were going after the same band of New People’s Army rebels when the misencounter occurred. NPA guerrillas must be doubled up with laughter.

Both the AFP and PNP are organizations that put a premium on discipline and regimented operations. Surely they can set up protocols for coordinating their activities within the same area of operation. This is important especially because it’s not unusual for enemies of the state to use police or military uniforms to mislead government forces, which raises the risk of deaths through friendly fire among state forces.

Implementing measures for identifying friendly forces shouldn’t prove too hard: passwords that are changed regularly and the use of certain identifying marks are just some of the simple ways of improving coordination. The military and police have communication devices that work even in the hinterlands and should be put to full use.

Another matter that calls for urgent attention is preventing mistrust from escalating between the AFP and PNP as a result of the misencounter. Some of the police survivors have voiced suspicion that they were deliberately ambushed. They point out that they were in uniform, it was a bright morning, and there was no way the soldiers could have mistaken them for enemies of the state.

One of the insinuations is that the police team might have stumbled into something anomalous involving the soldiers who opened fire. A thorough, impartial investigation should unearth the truth and give justice to those killed. Only the enemies of the state will benefit from divisiveness and disorganization among government forces.