The Philippine National Police (PNP) does not have enough money to offer cash payments for its members to summarily execute suspected drug offenders and other crime suspects, Senior Supt. Dionardo Carlos, PNP spokesperson, said on Wednesday.
In a news conference, Carlos denied the Reuters special report saying that police officers received amounts ranging from P10,000 to P5 million to kill crime suspects and that they planted evidence.
Nevertheless, he said the PNP was investigating the “serious” allegations made in the story and would like to get its hands on the report cited in the story.
“The amounts mentioned are a bit high,” Carlos said. “Clearly, we don’t have much funds, much more to spend that amount on such things. That is illegal and we are already short of funds. We don’t have a fund set aside for that.”
“There are also no such orders or operations being done by the PNP,” he added. “If there is such a thing, there is no order (for that) so that is not legitimate. It’s not sanctioned by the leadership and the organization.”
Carlos said that it would also be hard for policemen to plant evidence, unplug security cameras, and turn off street lamps in anti-drug operations to kill drug suspects.
“That’s hard to do on the ground level because we don’t have control over the CCTV operation or the recording,” he said. “There are also no such order or instructions coming from the PNP leadership.”
The Reuters story quoted two senior police officials – one a retired police intelligence officer and the other an active duty commander – as saying that the police were executing drug suspects.
The retired intelligence officer had penned a 26-page unpublished report on the Duterte administration’s bloody war on drugs.
“It seems they are repeating (previous allegations), unless they want to come out and say that we’re doing it, we’re the ones killing it,” Carlos said.
He said the PNP would want to get a copy of the 26-page report and the transcripts of the interviews with the two police officers.
“If they could provide us the transcript of the interview, we can determine their personality and motive,” Carlos said.
He said the PNP investigation would cover the resource persons behind the story and the veracity of the allegations made.
Carlos urged the two police officers to come out and file formal complaints.
“I hope they man up and not hide,” he said. “They are former and current members of the organization. There’s an established procedure. There’s a grievance committee. They should avail of it.” /atm