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[av_heading heading=’ Dela Rosa hits news on drug killing ‘cover-up’’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY ADRIAN STEWART CO
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Sunday, July 2, 2017
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MANILA – Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Ronald Dela Rosa belied reports that the police were covering up their execution of drug suspects by sending the latter to hospitals and destroying evidence at crime scenes.
Dela Rosa criticized the Reuters report that analyzed crime data and arrived at such conclusion, and accused the international news agency of simply finding fault in the police organization.
“Damned if you, damned if you don’t ang PNP e. Hinahanapan talaga kami ng Reuters ng atraso,” Dela Rosa said in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel. “Tanungin ko ang Reuters: Ano’ng gusto niyo? Pabayaan na lang naming mamatay iyong nabaril na tao?”
“Kung hindi dinala sa ospital, talagang may intention ang pulis na patayin kaya pinabayaang mamatay. ’Pag dinala mo naman sa ospital, ina-accuse ka naman na nagko-cover up ka. Saan kami pupunta ngayon?” he added.
An analysis of crime data from two of Metro Manila’s five police districts and interviews with doctors, law enforcement officials and victims’ families show that police were sending corpses to hospitals to destroy evidence at crime scenes and hide the fact that they were executing drug suspects, Reuters reported.
Reuters also cited instances and reports that officers take the drug suspect, who had been shot, to the hospital even though they were already dead and the doctors just record them as DOA, or “dead on arrival,” without asking questions.
“Who are we, who are the policemen to say that they are dead? They are not medical practitioners,” Dela Rosa said. “Siguro kung nakita iyan ng pulis na putol na iyong ulo, sabog na iyong utak, klaro na talaga na patay na.”
“Kapag patay na, tatawag na ang police ng SOCO (Scene of the Crime Operatives) para pa–imbestigahan. Pero kung iyong humihinga pa, iyong dugo nag–u-ooze pa, by all means you have to save lives,” he added.
Quoting a Manila police commander speaking anonymously, Reuters reported that, in late 2016, police began sending victims to hospitals to avoid crime scene investigations and media attention that might show they were executing drug suspects.
Doctors troubled by the rising number of police-related DOAs also said many drug suspects brought to hospital had been shot in the head and heart, sometimes at close range — “precise and unsurvivable wounds” that undermined police claims that suspects were injured during chaotic exchanges of gunfire, Reuters reported.
Metro Manila police chief Oscar Albayalde told Reuters he never heard of officers taking dead suspects to hospital to cover up crime scenes.
“We will have that investigated,” he said. If that investigation showed police were “intentionally moving these dead bodies and bringing them to the hospitals just to alter the evidence, then I think we have to make them explain.”
The Duterte administration has drawn flak for the deaths resulting from its war on drugs.
PNP data showed there were 3,151 drug suspects killed in police antidrug operations.
Out of 9,432 homicide cases from July 1, 2016 to March 31, 2017, 1,847 cases (19 percent) were found to be drug-related. A total of 5,691 cases (60 percent) were still being investigated./PN
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