Bato on drug war: Trust us, we value life

“Trust us, we value life!”

This was Philippine National Police Director-General Ronald dela Rosa’s plea, as he said the critics of human rights violations under the government’s antidrug campaign should focus on seeking change in the behavior of “drug personalities,” instead of abusive law enforcers.

The “bleeding hearts,” including the Church, should just ask suspected users to stop taking drugs so the police would not have to do anything to begin with, Dela Rosa said in a World Pandesal Day press briefing at Kamuning Bakery Café.

“Do not ask us to change. Ask that from drug personalities,” Dela Rosa said “If the war on drugs is bloody, stop taking drugs, stop fighting the police!”

“You’re always focusing only on the police. Please turn around, do an about-face,” he added.

Dela Rosa said the police would not have waged the so-called war on drugs if it had no regard for life.

He stuck to the official line that the police were not out to kill suspects in the controversial Oplan Tokhang, a door-to-door campaign meant to persuade suspects into surrendering for rehabilitation which has seen not a few deaths by people who allegedly resist arrest.

“From the very start, we wage the war on drugs because we value life. If we don’t value life and we value money, we will just receive money from the drug lords,” he said.

“What’s the essence of Tokhang? Knock and plead: knock at the house of the drug personality and plead. ‘Please, if we learn you are a pusher, stop it and turn over a new leaf,'” he added. “We don’t shoot the drug personalities right away.”

The PNP has gone through backlash over the past few months after the successive killings of teenage crime suspects among many incidents of alleged overkill. On Oct. 11, Dela Rosa even expressed “guilt” that dissatisfaction with the antidrug campaign caused President Duterte’s net satisfaction ratings to go down 18 points.

That moment of self-criticism came a day after Mr. Duterte on Oct. 10 ordered PNP and other law enforcement bodies to “leave” the implementation of the drug war to the much-smaller Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.

Photo by Vince F. Nonato.

Defending his agency, Dela Rosa said “we cannot say PDEA values life more than the PNP does” and chalked up the occurrence of fewer deaths during PDEA operations to “ratio and proportion.”

“We are Filipinos too, we’re law enforcers too. What happened was… if there aren’t many who died in PDEA operations, they’re fewer than the police. More were killed by the police because there are more police operations,” he reasoned out.

While he said he was “confident” regarding PDEA’s takeover of the antidrug campaign, Dela Rosa said “there is a degree of doubt” as to its smaller capacity.

Still, the transfer of the mandate to the PDEA as the “sole agency” for the drug war frees the PNP up to focus on the motorcycle-riding hitmen he blamed for tarnishing the image of the government’s campaign.

Dela Rosa said the vigilantes were “messing with our campaign.”

Citing admittedly unconfirmed and unverified reports, he said the hitmen, known as “riding-in-tandem” in the vernacular, were employed by “ninja cops” to “make the leadership of the police look bad.”

The police say they have killed more than 3,800 suspects, supposedly in self-defense, during legitimate operations. Another 2,000 were downed by unknown assailants whom the police claim were a result of fighting among drug syndicates.