Mincing no words, a Commission on Human Rights (CHR) official branded as “idiots” the Pasay City policemen who killed a drug suspect and his father inside a detention center supposedly after the two tried to grab their escort’s gun.
“It goes beyond reason. If you will snatch a gun, why do it inside the police station? Second, as the police, if they tried to grab the gun, why kill them?” said CHR National Capital Region director Gilbert Boiser.
“[They are] very obvious!” he exclaimed in an interview with reporters. “Using a word our President used—idiots! These people are idiots!” he said, referring to the police officers “who are blatant about executing people.”
The CHR is investigating the suspicious deaths of 28-year-old Jaybee Bertes, a suspected drug pusher, and his father Renato at the Pasay police detention cell last week, placing the two on a growing list of drug suspects killed by the police since President Duterte’s assumption of office on June 30.
The spate of drug killings has alarmed the CHR and many other human rights groups, prompting calls for a Senate investigation.
The younger Bertes, allegedly on the police list of local drug traffickers, was arrested around 11 p.m. on Wednesday without a warrant during a raid on their Pasay home. Fearing the worst, his father had insisted on accompanying him to the station, the CHR said.
Based on the account of the arresting officers, they took the two men for routine drug testing to the crime laboratory, and upon their return to the detention cell at 2 a.m. on Thursday, the older Bertes wrestled with PO2 Alipio Balo for his gun as the latter was taking off Jaybee’s handcuff.
Balo supposedly managed to regain possession of the gun and fired successive shots at Renato, while Balo’s partner, PO1 Michael Tomas, shot Jaybee, according to the police’s version of the story.
Jaybee’s wife Harra Kazuo similarly expressed misgivings about the police’ story. On Friday, she went to the CHR and met Boiser to seek the agency’s intervention.
“My husband would never do that. He is a kindhearted man. He never hurt me or his child. And if he would try to grab a gun, he would first think that they might be killed,” she said.
The CHR is now preparing subpoenas for the Pasay policemen involved in the case.