Police ‘hazing’ victims quoted: It’s OK

CAMP VICENTE LIM, Laguna— All four policemen, summoned as prosecution witnesses, said they did not feel degraded or felt that any of their rights were violated when they were forced to lick flag poles, swallow chillies, and have the chillies rubbed over their genitals as these were only part of police training.

In fact, they were “thankful” and said that the exercises “honed their guts” as they become members of a special counterinsurgency police unit.

Lawyer Romeo Dolleton, the legal counsel of the 17 policemen charged with grave misconduct and violation of human rights, pointed these out during the summary hearing on the alleged “hazing video” that turned up at the Commission on Human Rights in early August.

The video showed clips of two separate incidents that took place sometime in February during the “reception rites” and in September 2010 during the “Escape and Evasion” exercise when police recruits underwent training with the Regional Public Safety Battalion (RPSB) at Camp Eldridge in Los Baños, Laguna.

“We don’t see any complaint (from the witnesses). They didn’t (even) find any violation (of their human rights),” said Dolleton, who cross-examined the witnesses during Wednesday’s hearing conducted by the Regional Internal Affairs Service (RIAS) of the Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon) police here.

Senior Insp. Alexander Collado, summary hearing officer, said he will issue the case resolution five days after both panels submit their position papers on Sept. 17.

“Did you feel degraded? Did you feel that your human rights were violated?” the defense lawyer asked the witnesses.

The four prosecution witnesses—Police Officers 1 Denmark Izon,  Elmer Gubi, Zaldy Centos and Ulysses Afuang, who were part of the 138-member training class on the video footage—all replied with a “no.”