Duterte scolds 228 cops on TV
manila — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte angrily berated more than 200 allegedly erring policemen on national TV on Tuesday and said he would send them to a southern island to fight extremists dreaded for their beheadings.
Duterte’s expletive-filled outburst against the officers at Manila’s presidential palace was his latest tirade against a police force that he has called “rotten to the core.” He recently banned the national police from carrying out his anti-drug campaign after a group of officers used the crackdown as a cover to kidnap and kill a South Korean man in an extortion scandal.
If you die there, I’ll tell the police not to spend to bring you here and just bury you there.” Duterte, Philippine President
The 228 policemen from metropolitan Manila are accused of a range of administrative and criminal offenses, including extortion and illegal arrests. Some have tested positive for drug use, regional police spokeswoman Inspector Kimberly Molitas said.
Duterte, a longtime crime-busting city mayor and government prosecutor who ran after erring policemen and soldiers before he rose to the presidency in June, said he had wanted to punish the policemen by ordering them to clear the murky Pasig River by the presidential palace of water lilies, but that the river was clear of lilies.
So he ordered them instead to prepare in two weeks for a two-year deployment to Basilan Island, the birthplace of the brutal Abu Sayyaf extremist group.
“If you survive, come back here,” Duterte told the policemen, who were made to stand in the sun before him outside the Malacanang palace. “If you die there, I’ll tell the police not to spend to bring you here and just bury you there.” —