Body count

There seems to be outrage at the killing of Kian delos Santos, the 17-year-old Grade 11 student killed by Caloocan City police in a supposed big-time anti-drug operation last week. The outrage has even spread to known allies of President Duterte in the Senate, which is set to conduct an investigation into Kian's killing, along with the bloody war on drugs. I really wonder what will be different this time, when the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee already said there were no extrajudicial killings in the country. Is it because the evidence is overwhelming? Is it because there is outrage, something that did not exist with past killings in police operations?

The autopsy conducted by the Public Attorney's Office revealed that Kian suffered three gunshot wounds -one in the back and two in the head, close to his left ear. The trajectory of the bullet wounds were consistent to Kian already lying face down on the ground when he was shot, an indication that he was executed. With two shots to the head, the police apparently made sure he would not survive. The autopsy also added that there were no indications that he fought back. The autopsy findings merely confirmed what many already believe; that Kian was just another addition to the "successful" anti-drug campaign of the PNP.

The PNP has gone on the offensive as well. No less than PNP chief Gen. Dela Rosa accused Kian of being a courier of his father and uncle. That his name only very recently made it to their drug list, and the emergence of a supposed drug peddler who has had multiple dealings with Kian before. If he has had multiple dealings with Kian, and if he was already arrested, why is Kian's name just "recently added" to the drug list? And with the kind of bloody campaign this administration is conducting against illegal drugs, why is this supposed drug peddler still alive? So much for being on the offensive.

I have said before that the PNP is still the same PNP of past administrations. The police force does not change with the changing of administrations. And as far as I know, dealing in illegal drugs, whether using or peddling, has been against the law for a long time. So why are the police suddenly so "successful" in their anti-drug operations? Should it take someone like Duterte to rally the PNP to do its job, again "so successfully", against illegal drugs? If the president wants to go after kidnappers, will we see a surge in dead kidnappers? Does the PNP operate at the whims of whoever sits in the Palace? Or is it because there really is a reward system of some sort now in place in the PNP today for a body count in the anti-illegal drugs campaign? Is this why Kian was just singled out to be another collectible bounty?

I can only hope that the outrage at Kian's killing does not lose steam. I also hope that Kian's killing finally opens the eyes of many to what is really going on in the country today. People are being killed, just to show how successful the campaign against illegal drugs is under this administration. Whether they are innocent or not can no longer be determined, since what seems important is the body count.

‘I can only hope that the outrage at Kian's killing does not lose steam. I also hope that Kian's killing finally

opens the eyes of many to what is really going on

in the country today.’