Cops behaving badly

Some want to be feared. Others want to be loved. Perhaps members of the Philippine National Police should just go for respect.

Respect won’t come easy with the recent incidents involving cops in the active service and one who was dismissed, but who might have been emboldened by what was described as his co-terminus job at the office of an associate justice of the Supreme Court.

The office of SC Justice Ricardo Rosario announced that it had terminated the services of dismissed policeman Wilfredo Gonzales on Aug. 27 after learning about the traffic altercation wherein Gonzales cocked his gun and slugged a cyclist on the head.

Since Gonzales is no longer in the service, the PNP can distance itself somewhat from his actions. But the PNP received flak for the seeming defense of Gonzales by the chief of the Quezon City Police District.

Last Wednesday, the fallout prompted Brig. Gen. Nicolas Torre III to resign as QCPD chief. It was immediately accepted by PNP chief Benjamin Acorda, surely with great relief, as he also had to deal with other cases of cops behaving badly.

The latest incident involved Pasay police S/Sgt. Marsan Dolipas, shown in a video straddling a motorcycle rider after a traffic altercation in Makati. It looks like Dolipas could be in the right though, since the rider, Angelito Rencio, had introduced himself as an Army major – which he is not – and was packing a gun, for which he couldn’t show a permit to carry outside his residence.

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Dolipas can be let off on this one – but not the Makati Police Substation 3, which allowed Rencio to leave after he turned over his gun and promised to return with the necessary firearm permit.

The police let him go without verifying his false claim of belonging to the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Even before the AFP disowned him, in the absence of a permit to carry a gun outside his residence, Rencio should have been held for illegal gun possession. Sen. Robinhood Padilla spent a few years in Bilibid for this offense. Why should someone else be exempted just because he claims to be a member of the AFP?

Not surprisingly, nothing has been heard from Rencio. And so, on Wednesday, the commander of the Makati police substation and the desk officer on duty were relieved.

Over in Navotas, Col. Allan Umipig was sacked as police chief along with six of his men who directly participated in the operation on Aug. 2 that killed 17-year-old Jerhode Baltazar. On Aug. 25 also in Navotas, 10 members of the PNP Maritime Group were placed under restrictive custody for allegedly beating up a 15-year-old boy who was apprehended by citizens for stealing a cell phone.

In Rodriguez, Rizal, 15-year-old John Francis Ompad died on Aug. 20 when a bullet intended for his brother hit him outside their house. The shot was fired by police Cpl. Arnulfo Sabillo, who supposedly conducted a mobile checkpoint while in plainclothes. Ompad’s elder brother John Ace, fearing that Sabillo and a civilian companion were criminals, drove off and was chased all the way to his house.

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Even ranking PNP officials have described such actions as police overkill. You wonder how much of this brand of law enforcement is a carry-over from the take-no-prisoners approach pursued by Rodrigo Duterte.

Baltazar’s friend, who was cleaning a fishing boat with him before the cops arrived and began firing away, told the Senate last Wednesday that the police wanted him to link the victim to drugs.

This was denied by the policemen, who at least admitted that Baltazar’s killing was a case of mistaken identity. Considering the killings that were conducted in Duterte’s war on drugs, however, the witness’ story is more plausible.

In the previous administration, Baltazar’s death would have been recorded as a drug bust and the boy described as a drug suspect who was fatally shot when he resisted arrest. Anyone who claimed otherwise would have been subjected to harassment and death threats.

This time, we should at least give credit to the administration for not swallowing such stories, and even sacking the cops directly involved as well as their superiors for command responsibility.

Also on Wednesday, Col. Cesar Gerente was relieved as Mandaluyong police chief after testing positive for illegal drug use. He can still challenge the test result.

Last June, 50 cops including two generals were indicted in connection with the 990 kilos of shabu valued at P6.7 billion found in a Tondo office warehouse owned by police M/Sgt. Rodolfo Mayo Jr.

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There must be serious confusion down the ranks of those who were spoiled by Oplans Tokhang and Double Barrel and the repeated promises that the president of the republic had their back, that he would be the only one who would go to prison in case the anti-drug warriors found themselves in legal trouble.

Unfortunately for human rights advocates, there has also been some genuine consternation from those who supported Duterte’s hardline approach to law and order. That support stems from frustration over the weakness of the criminal justice system, which makes violent short cuts and extrajudicial methods of keeping the public safe seem like better options.

The 15-year-old cell phone snatcher isn’t getting much sympathy from these people, even as they acknowledge that 15 cops versus one boy is overkill.

The hardline approach, it must be emphasized, is not unique to Duterte. During the first Marcos administration, even a change of station commanders in the Manila police was bad news for troublemakers in the covered area. In one such change of command, 10 of the most notorious pickpockets in the area were found dead one morning, piled on top of each other. The killers were never publicly identified. But cops swore there were no pickpocketing cases in the area for a long time.

Drug-related killings continue under Marcos 2.0, but on a much diminished scale. The laid-back BBM seems to have little appetite for brutal methods of law enforcement.

The challenge is for this mindset to trickle down to the PNP ranks. And to persuade fans of Dirty Harry that public safety is possible without resorting to lethal law enforcement shortcuts.