Diminishing returns

Reading between the lines, there are people who think President Duterte’s pronouncements on the killing of Albuera Mayor Rolando Espinosa indicate that the hit was ordered by Dirty Rody himself. If he didn’t support cops who are waging his war on drugs, they might stop following his orders, the President said when asked about the case.

Duterte may be simply referring to the presumption of regularity in operations by government forces. But that presumption should have been tempered by the findings of a Senate panel that grilled the players in the incident. The panel’s conclusion was that there was “premeditation” in the killing – meaning it was a planned rubout. This seemed to jibe with the initial findings in an internal probe conducted by the police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) on its own regional members, who launched the operation without informing higher-ups.

Because of Dirty Rody’s spirited defense of the cops who were supposed to serve a search warrant covering Espinosa’s jail cell at 4 a.m., there is suspicion that the CIDG team in fact had top-level clearance for the operation.

And by top-level, I don’t mean Philippine National Police chief Ronald dela Rosa, who was on a first-class junket with his family in Las Vegas, fully paid for by Sen. Manny Pacquiao, when Espinosa was shot dead. You have to worry about the rule of law when the PNP chief and a senator are clueless about the prohibition governing such princely gifts given to public officials. And their reaction is not contrition but brazenness. They ask: what’s the big fuss?

Dirty Rody had a similar reaction to the killing of Espinosa and another inmate in an adjacent cell at the sub-provincial jail in Baybay City. What’s the fuss?

Maybe we’re just reading too much into Du30’s statements. But what is implied is that Espinosa got what was coming to him, and the President sees no need to bother about the niceties of how someone high on his list of narco politicians got neutralized. After all, the mayor had pointed to his own son Kerwin as the drug lord of Albuera town. Did the father protect the son? How could he not? Before Espinosa’s death, six of the family’s bodyguards, the mayor’s lawyer and a female companion had also been shot dead. What’s another death in the family?

The speculation is that Dirty Rody sanctioned Espinosa’s killing because the mayor continued dealing drugs even after his surrender, using the sub-provincial jail as his base of operations, in the same way that several inmates turned the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa into the command center for drug trafficking in Metro Manila and other parts of Luzon.

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Dirty Rody, however, should be careful about endorsing, even obliquely, what even senators believe was a case of summary execution. It can bolster accusations of state-sponsored killings and systematic violation of human rights, which can earn Du30 an indictment before the International Criminal Court.

Critics of extrajudicial killings are said to be looking into reports that cops who refuse to kill or participate in the bloody war on drugs find themselves “floating” or in the freezer, or reassigned to the kangkungan or hardship posts.

The pressure to kill is said to be stronger as Du30’s self-imposed six-month deadline to significantly reduce the drug menace approaches. Already the deadline has been extended by another six months, with the President lamenting that there remain at least two congressmen, three or four provincial governors, 17 mayors and thousands of barangay captains and personnel still to be stopped in their drug-related activities.

When the President ended his boycott of the media and sat down with STAR editors at Malacañang, he narrated to us the difficulty of pinning down even notorious drug dealers.

Evidence that can stand in court is needed. Even when cops have known for months that a person is dealing or abusing drugs, the President said, the person must still be caught red-handed. The drug abuser can be tested for prohibited substances. The drug dealer, if not caught trying to sell drugs, will have to be indicted for the lesser offense of possession and may soon be out on bail, free to peddle drugs again.

The suspect may not even have anything in his possession and may have to be freed without charges – unless anti-narcotics cops use their creative imagination and produce the needed evidence befitting the suspected criminal offense. The President didn’t say this, of course. Neither did he say that sometimes it is more efficient to engage a suspected drug dealer in a shootout. Whether the armed encounter is real or contrived, it would mean one less purveyor of substances that permanently fry one’s brain.

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At least Du30 may expect the US to be much less vocal about the bloodbath in his drug war. Especially if incoming president Donald Trump picks former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani as secretary of state.

As mayor, Giuliani is remembered for shutting down Manhattan’s red light district and employing the “broken windows” approach to fighting crime. This is the criminology version of the saying that from little acorns grow mighty oaks – that curbing minor crimes such as vandalism and drinking in public prevents more serious crimes from happening. Dirty Rody seems to subscribe to the same theory, and so far his ruthless approach still enjoys popular support, thanks to public frustration over the weakness of the criminal justice system.

He will enjoy sustained support, however, if he shows that he does not sanction crude summary executions and other abuses.

Only drug personalities and those who benefit from the illegal drug trade will say they are not in favor of cracking down on the drug menace. But people are also aware that the propensity to kill is prone to abuse, especially by a police organization where even officers have been implicated in the drug trade.

It’s a dirty war and Du30 is ready to fight as dirty as it gets. But without structural reforms to strengthen the rule of law, killing as the main tool of law enforcement tends to have diminishing returns.