REP. BONIFACIO Bosita of the 1-Rider party-list bared last week that police officers are under orders to follow a quota system in the arrest of drug offenders.
Policemen are under constant pressure to perform. They effect and report buy-bust operations that look good on paper, and oftentimes break established protocols to salvage their positions and prospective promotions.
Himself a former policeman, Bosita said that a minimum of drug buy-busts per week is being demanded from cops, leading to the commission of violations that can result in the dismissal of the drug cases filed in court.
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Alleged drug offenders do get lucky when these irregularities are noticed by prosecutors and judges.
Generally, however, prosecutors of the Department of Justice merely toss the problem of weighing evidence to the courts of law. They are reluctant to dismiss complaints filed by the police although irregularities in the buy-bust operations are apparent on the face of affidavits of arrest.
Planting of evidence, although a crime by itself, is a well-documented practice among police officers anxious to show good performance on paper.
Inquest proceedings are quick events because of the deadline within which to file charges in court. The summary nature of these hearings is the convenient excuse to suspend judgment on police violations and leave the fate of the accused to a full-blown trial.
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The Constitution requires trials to be fast. The average trial would however drag on for around two years because of the heavy load of the courts.
In the meantime, those accused of drug trading, many of whom are apprehended in buy-bust operations involving minuscule amounts of shabu, linger in jail because judges seldom grant bail pending trial when the offense is penalized by life imprisonment.
The result is jail congestion. Philippine jails are notoriously among the most overcrowded in the world.
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Rep. France Castro of ACT party-list says that the alleged quota system practiced by the Philippine National Police may be used in evidence against former President Rodrigo Duterte before the International Criminal Court.
āI believe that this quota system is one of the reasons why extra-judicial killings and human rights violations were prevalent during Duterteās fake drug war,ā Castro said.
The pre-trial chamber of the ICC has authorized its prosecutorās resumption of investigation into crimes against humanity committed during the drug war.
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Bosita confirmed the existence of the quota system during the hearings conducted by the House of Representatives that is looking into alleged abductions recently committed by the authorities.
Rep. Romeo Acop, another ex-policeman, filed a resolution alleging that some cops have engaged in abductions, not buy-bust arrests as their affidavits claim.
The measure is intended to curb illegal buy-busts that have apparently become a norm among drug enforcers.
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Among the key takeaways from those hearings is Bositaās contention that the number of buy-busts is a misleading barometer of police performance.
The practice has contributed to the proliferation of so-called āconfidential informantsā whose leads provided to the police are veritable hit lists that defy credible validation.
The more sustainable barometer would be the crime rate in the locality where the police officer is assigned. Accolades must be accorded to the police chief and his subalterns who can maintain zero or low crime incidence in their assignments, not those who can stage the most buy-busts in a given period./PN
