They were so adept at kidnapping, killing

Those cops who kidnapped and murdered the Korean retiree were pros. In casing the quarry, they used fake IDs and mission orders, and deflated his car tires to prevent escape. They were adept at negotiating ransom and staging the drop-off. They killed clean, by strangulation inside a car, with wire, packing tape, and gloved hands. They picked the least suspicious location: right inside Camp Crame headquarters, near the Philippine National Police director general’s official residence. They destroyed the most basic evidence by cremating the corpse – no corpus delicti, no crime. They even had an innocuous death certificate and cremation consent. To throw investigators off the trail they crafted statements, including from wives, designed to elicit public sympathy. They likely have done it before. But they couldn’t have been coldblooded criminals when they joined the force. They were idealists eager to serve, at the risk of life and limb. The PNP schooled them in criminology, trained them in case buildup, and toughened them in crime busting. Something happened along the way, though. Superiors made them carry out unlawful orders, shielded them from punishment, and rewarded them for dirty jobs disguised as special missions. In time they began to think themselves above the law. They became as ruthless as the thugs they hunted down.

Those policemen did not meet by chance, and thence plotted to kidnap for ransom and kill. They were brought together long before their posting at the Anti- Illegal Drugs Group. There they found the perfect cover for their modus operandi: the official Operation Tokhang raids on pushers’ hideouts in the war against drugs. But those policemen already operated as a team before. It takes trust to work together in a highly illegal manner, with each a specialist in picking the victim, collecting the ransom, and wiping off the evidence. In their past assignment those officers must have had a trainer and mastermind in crime.

That mastermind must once have been an idealist too. As a middle officer he could have been given the mission to clear his new provincial assignment of crime syndicates. Being a graduate of the military academy, he employed the quickest method: terminate with extreme prejudice. To accomplish that, he formed and trained the team of silent assassins. Soon the team gained experience – and awards – for wiping out bank robbers, hijackers, and cattle rustlers. In time the team members rose up the ranks.

The politicians soon took notice of the mastermind’s skills. They made him colonel, then general, and gave him bigger assignments. They didn’t give him the funds, though, for that’s for their pork barrels. The general and his special team had to fend for themselves. At first they accepted payola from “jueteng,” justifying illegal gambling to be a victimless crime anyway. The vice lord turned out to be the “shabu” (meth) distributor too. So the general and his team ended up as the protectors against rival narcotics syndicates. They took to abducting and killing the rivals for a fee, to finance legitimate missions and their new lifestyles. In time the general retired and moved on to politics, leaving his team to the care of the new general.

That team at the AIDG continued with its criminal ways. Whenever the members got into trouble, there were superiors always willing to clear them. They were exposed and busted only because the murdered Korean’s family cried to the press. Yet there likely are many more such teams, honed by other generals in other locales, preying on hapless civilians. They thrive because the chain of command has been politicized, and internal discipline weakened. Recently no less than a Chinese Filipino friend of President Rodrigo Duterte reportedly was victimized by Tokhang-for-ransom. So were 11 Chinese nationals and three more Koreans – by separate teams of copsturned-criminals.

We are told to keep faith in the police force. We are even lectured to fight for our rights by reporting misdeeds of uniformed men. At the same time we hear their Commander-in-Chief ordering them to shoot at will, and assuring to take their side if indicted. We know that such loose talk will embolden the crooked to commit worse crimes. We know too that putting a good director general in the PNP would not automatically reform it. That would take years and billions of pesos of re-indoctrination and retraining. And soon the good director general too would have to retire, leaving behind the scalawags to multiply. Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM). Gotcha archives on Facebook: https:// www. facebook. com/ pages/ JariusBondoc/ 1376602159218459, or The STAR website http://www.philstar.com/ author/Jarius%20Bondoc/GOTCHA

Good cops turn bad when given illegal orders, then shielded from punishment and even rewarded for dirty jobs.