ONE day in November, we woke up to the news that the mayor of a Leyte town had been gunned down inside his cell.
Members of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group-Region VIII said Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. had tried to put up a fight while they were serving him a warrant. Another inmate, Raul Yap, was also killed.
We were incredulous that somebody already jailed to face drug charges slapped against him would have within his person weapons with which he could harm others, or at least defend himself.
But CIDG regional chief Superintendent Marvin Marcos and his team wore a smugness all throughout that period, even during the Senate investigation on the matter, and even when Philippine National Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa tried to relieve him of his post.
Dela Rosa was later on overruled by “higher authority”—who turned out to be no less than President Rodrigo Duterte.
That Senate committee supported the findings of the National Bureau of Investigation that the killing of Espinosa had been premeditated.
The Justice Department had recommended the filing of murder charges for the 19 cops involved in the Espinosa slay—only to step back and downgrade the charges to homicide, instead.
The resolution said the DoJ “cannot speculate or even assume that there was evident premeditation as nothing in the records could prove the same.”
Given what we have heard so far, we do not know how there could not be any premeditation in Espinosa’s killing. Then again, these are lawyers that can make arguments and offer evidence either way, depending on what suits the purposes of their clients.
But what are our purposes, really? We need to be assured that while this administration clamps down on the drug menace, it does so in a manner that is efficient but lawful. Unfortunately, what keep resounding in our heads are the words of the President who committed to pardon policemen in the event they are found guilty of crimes committed in the name of the war against drugs.
We have not yet thoroughly addressed these concerns—it so happened that one problem kept emerging after another. While we do have to encourage our cops to do their best in protecting the people from the ills of illegal drugs, this latest message from the Justice Department and from the President himself just emboldens them the wrong way.