Sen. Risa Hontiveros (Screen grab / Senate PRIB file photo)
MANILA, Philippines — Senator Risa Hontiveros sees gross negligence and a dramatic lack of coordination in the recent shootout between police officers and anti-drug agents near a mall in Quezon City last Wednesday.
“There was a dramatic lack of coordination between the PNP (Philippine National Police) and PDEA (Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency). Someone somewhere must have been grossly negligent. Ang laki ng intelligence funds nila pareho pero ganyan ang nangyari,” Hontiveros said in a statement Thursday.
She bared that the PNP has a 2021 intelligence fund of P856 million and P500 million for the PDEA.
Two police officers were killed while four PDEA agents were “badly injured” in Wednesday’s anti-illegal drugs operation conducted near a shopping mall along Commonwealth Avenue.
“We need to look into this further. It is very alarming that this is not the first time that such a misencounter has happened. The National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) did admit that this has happened numerous times. These misencounters should be rare, not common,” Hontiveros stressed.
“How could this have happened, at all, in the first place? Why did the shootout take place for as long as an hour? Hindi ba pwedeng magkalinawan, even within the first few minutes, that a misencounter breaks out?” the senator added.
The Senate Public Order committee, chaired by Senator Ronald dela Rosa, is set to conduct an investigation into the shootout on Tuesday next week.
A joint PNP-PDEA board of inquiry will also be formed to probe the incident, according to PNP spokesman Brigadier General Ildebrandi Usana.
Hontiveros expressed hopes that the board of inquiry will be able to “get to the bottom of what happened.”
“The Board of Inquiry will have to tell the public the full and true story as they can discover it, including kung nasaan yung nile-legitimate anti-drug operation or nasaan yung bina-buy bust operation. Sino sila?” she said.
“All those details are needed just to put the public’s mind and heart at rest about the very dramatic and traumatic ‘misencounter’ that happened last night,” she added.