Amendments to drugs law could have prevented PNP-PDEA shootout — solon

MANILA, Philippines — The proposed amendments to the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 could have prevented the shooting incident between operatives of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and the Philippine National Police (PNP), a lawmaker said Monday.

Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, who also chairs the House committee on dangerous drugs, said one of the proposed amendments to Section 21 of the law makes body cameras mandatory in law enforcer’s anti-drug operations.

“This could have aborted any seeming illegal activity that were intended to be perpetrated by any personality against law enforcers or could have recorded all activities during the entire operation,” Barbers said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, even as we have called for its use years ago, our pleas seem to have fallen on deaf ears, whether intentional or otherwise.  Now that we have included it in the law and passed it in the House, the Senate has yet to file a similar bill,” the lawmaker added.

Other proposed amendments to the law include legal presumptions against personalities who could be considered coddlers or protectors and financiers of drug suspects or syndicates; importers and exporters as well as manufacturers and cultivators of dangerous drugs; and consenting lessors of properties being used as laboratories or drug dens.

“If before, these personalities go scot-free, now these legal presumptions will put them on almost the same footing as the drug suspects themselves because of the presence of factual circumstances that will incriminate them and thus could make them liable under the amended law,” Barbers said.

“There will be no place for them to hide now and their world will be much smaller if these amendments will be passed quickly,” he further said.

The House recently passed on second reading House Bill 7814 or “An Act Strengthening Drug Prevention and Control” which amends the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

EDV