PNP: No policy encouraging violence, extrajudicial acts among police

The Philippine National Police (PNP) on Thursday denied that it encourages cops to commit violence or perform their functions in an “extrajudicial” manner after the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) found “intent to kill” in PNP drug war operations.

“Nasabi na po ng aming OIC (officer in charge), si General Guillermo Eleazar, na wala pong polisiya na naghihikayat sa ating mga kapulisan na gumawa ng marahas o extrajudicial way of exercising their functions during the operations,” PNP spokesman Police Brigadier General Ildebrandi Usana said in a Laging Handa briefing.

(Our officer in charge, General Guillermo Eleazar, has already said that there is no policy encouraging our police to commit violence or an extrajudicial way of exercising their functions during the operations.)

CHR spokesperson Atty. Jacqueline de Guia has said the independent body’s probe of drug war deaths, some of which were a result of police operations, found a “strong indication of intent to kill.”

“In our initial findings, we have deduced that because of the presence of the multiple gunshot wounds on the body of the victims as well as the location of those wounds [that] were at the fatal parts of the body, then such has a strong indication of intent to kill,” she told GMA News Online.

Usana said the PNP does not condone cops who flout the law and urged the CHR to submit complaints from victims to the police.

“We really are asking those people in the know, especially the witnesses, to file complaints against our police officers,” he said.

“Meron po kaming motu proprio investigation that is usually being done by the Internal Affairs Service and we assure our people na ‘yung mga pamamaraan to discipline our people ay isinasagawa nang naaayon din po sa batas,” he added.

(We have a motu proprio investigation that is usually being done by the Internal Affairs Service and we assure our people that the methods of disciplining our people are in accordance with the law.)

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra earlier told the United Nations that police failed to examine the weapons of drug war fatalities who were accused of fighting back (“nanlaban”). 

Nearly 6,000 drug suspects were killed between July 2016 and September 2020, government data showed. —LDF, GMA News