The chairman of the House of Representatives committee on dangerous drugs on Monday batted for a review of the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 to prevent a repeat of the deadly shootout between operatives of the Philippine National Police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.
Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers said amending the law could have prevented Wednesday’s shootout that led to the deaths of two policemen, a PDEA agent and an informant.
Barbers earlier filed a measure to strengthen the law but it was not passed under the 17th Congress.
Upon the resumption of the 18th Congress, Barbers refiled the same bill and was able to have it passed on 2nd reading on Tuesday, a day before the deadly encounter happened in Quezon City.
In the proposed amendments, body cameras will become mandatory equipment to be worn by law enforcement operatives during actual anti-drug operations.
“This could have aborted any seeming illegal activity that were intended to be perpetrated by any personality against law enforcers or could have recorded all activities during the entire operation.
Unfortunately, even as we have called for its use years ago, our pleas seem to have fallen on deaf ears, whether intentional or otherwise.
Now, we have passed it in the House, but the Senate has yet to file a similar bill,” Barbers said.
The proposed measure also includes legal presumptions against personalities who could be considered coddlers/protectors and financiers of drug suspects or syndicates, importers/exporters and manufacturers/cultivators of dangerous drugs and consenting lessors of properties being used as laboratories or drug dens.
“If before, these personalities go scot-free, now these legal presumptions will put them on almost the same footing as the drug suspects themselves because of the presence of factual circumstances that will incriminate them and thus could make them liable under the amended law. There will be no place for them to hide now and their world will be much smaller if these amendments will be passed quickly,” Barbers added.
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra earlier assured the public that the National Bureau of Investigation will “go anywhere its probe will lead” on the Feb. 24 shootout between police and state narcotics agents.
While the NBI will focus primarily on criminal liability in the shootout, it could also look at administrative liability too.
President Rodrigo Duterte declared that the NBI was the only agency mandated to conduct an investigation into the shootout, effectively ending a joint PNP-PDEA probe as well as separate investigations at the House of Representatives and at the Senate.