HIS “POLICY DIRECTION” is for the police to focus more on the war on narcotics, according to the PNP spokesperson.
THE PHILIPPINE National Police (PNP) cited a rise in the number of arrested or killed drug suspects after the May 9 elections, which a ranking official partly attributed to the “motivation” and “policy direction” from incoming President Rodrigo Duterte to step up the war on narcotics.
In a Camp Crame briefing on Friday, PNP spokesperson Chief Supt. Wilben Mayor said that from Jan. 1 to May 9, there were 13,920 arrested suspects and 39 more killed in anti-drug operations nationwide.
After the elections, from May 10 to June 15, there were 3,760 arrested suspects and 29 killed, he added.
“What we can show there is an increase after (the elections) compared to the average per month (from Jan. 1 to May 9),” Mayor said. The monthly average from the pre-election period he cited was 3,480 for the arrests and nine for the kills.
Mayor attributed the increase to two factors: the compliance of the police units with the regular targets set by the PNP high command and “the motivation of the incoming President (for the PNP) to focus more on illegal drugs, because that is his policy direction.”
Duterte, the tough-talking Davao City mayor, won the presidential race by a landslide on an ironfisted, anticrime agenda. In one of his postvictory pronouncements, he openly encouraged ordinary civilians to arrest or even shoot known drug lords, and later offered a bounty of up to P5 million.
Mayor noted a “significant increase” in the number of arrested suspects particularly in Region 7 (Central Visayas), National Capital Region, and Region 4A (Calabarzon) in the past month alone.
There were 177 arrested suspects in Region 7 from May 10 to June 15, as compared to 167 from January to May; 1,155 were arrested in one month in Region 4A as compared to 3, 719 in the previous four months; and 883 arrested suspects in Metro Manila from May to June, compared to 2,877 from January to May.
Figures from Region 3 (Central Luzon) showed that 12 suspects were killed in the past month alone, compared to 13 in the first four months of the year; 6 in Region 4A, compared to 8; five in Region 7 from May 10 to June 15, compared to zero from Jan. 1 to May 9; and four in the last month alone in Region 12 (Soccsksargen), with four in the four previous months.
Mayor maintained that based on the reports of the operational units concerned, the killings of the suspects occurred during “legitimate encounters.”
“The reason why the suspects were killed is they engaged in a shootout [with] the law enforcers,” Mayor said. “If we base it on their reports, they followed operational procedures because there is imminent danger on their part.”
Mayor said the PNP would welcome any investigation into the killings. “We just ask that they give us also the benefit of the doubt and accord us the presumption of regularity in the performance of duty.”