Amid growing concern from the Church and human rights advocates over the rising number of drug suspects killed by lawmen under the Duterte administration, the Philippine National Police cited its own data to stress that most PNP operations don’t end in deaths.
Chief Insp. Bryan Gregorio of the PNP public information office said that while 316 drug suspects had been killed by the police nationwide from July 1 to 27—for a daily average of 11 fatalities—a total of 4,386 suspects had been arrested and 141,659 surrendered.
He noted that the suspects were killed after they resisted arrest and fought it out with policemen.
Given these figures, he said, it would be “unfair to label” the police as having a mentality that tramples on the suspects’ rights.
“The PNP would like to assure the public that in conducting police operations, we follow the rule of law. We assure them that in enforcing the law, we uphold the rights of suspects,” Gregorio said on Saturday in a media forum in Quezon City.
He appealed to the public to keep their trust in the PNP and let it do its job. In case of abuses, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) is there to investigate, the official stressed.
“We ask [the public] to support us because speculations can affect our officers’ morale, ruin our reputation and possibly affect future operations. We have a checks and balances (mechanism in place); the CHR can process complaints. We also have our internal affairs service that looks into our personnel’s performance,” he said. Jovic Yee
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