The mystery of the script

Cong Corrales .

“Impunity thrives not so much through actively putting up obstacles to accountability. More than anything, it is nurtured by apathy and inaction of governments and people.” -Nonoy Espina, chairman, National Union of Journalists of the Philippines

IT is good that the city council’s committee on police and public safety would finally be looking into the spate of anti-drug operation killings here. Hats off, also, to Camp Alagar for admitting there is something amiss when deadly force seems to be the response of choice of its operatives. They are, after all, law enforcers.

This show of concern happened after, more or less, 10 people have been killed here in the city.

Camp Alagar spokesman Supt. Surki Sereñas said all of the officers involved in the anti-drug operation killings are undergoing investigation and could be slapped with administrative cases. He said their Internal Affairs Service would be recommending to the top brass of Camp Alagar after its investigation.

However, Sereñas said the IAS recommendation for the anti-drug operation killings in the city would be based on the reports from the Cagayan de Oro City Police Office.

This means that internal affairs investigators will be depending on what the post-operation reports say, which have been filed by the anti-drug operatives. Yes, I know. This almost sounds like a conflict of interest but we have to give our police force the presumption of regularity.

Presumption of regularity, by the way, is a legal precept that assumes government bodies have properly discharged their official mandates. In this case, we assume that the anti-drug operatives followed the protocols in the conduct of anti-drug operations to the letter.

So, let’s look at the post operations report of the operatives. This paper found disturbing and uncanny similarities in almost all of the anti-drug operation killings in the city.

“The similarities in the cases are striking. In nearly all the shooting deaths, the slain suspects had no cash except the marked money of P500, more or less, had a few sachets of suspected shabu, were armed with caliber .38 revolvers or, at times, caliber .45 pistols and/or grenades. According to the police, those killed allegedly fired shots but missed after sensing that they were dealing with undercover cops, and then got shot and killed,” this paper reported.

In the spirit of logic and public service, join me as we deconstruct this narrative. Let’s dissect it.

First, the slain drug suspects (emphasis on suspects) had no cash with them. Most of them only had the buy-bust money, usually amounting to P500. Keep in mind that these buy-bust operations usually happen at night or in the wee hours. This tells us that these poor unfortunate souls are crappy at what they do — selling drugs. If they were any good, they should have at least P1,000 cash in them at the time of the bust. Drug dealers, as we’ve seen in movies and read in books, are movers. They move illegal merchandise as fast as they can.

However, I understand the part were operatives find only a few sachets of suspected shabu. Common sense will tell you that it wouldn’t be sensible to be lugging around kilos of illegal merchandise as they sell on the streets. As we’ve seen kilos of illegal merchandise are the customs’ cup of tea.

Second, and to me, the most disturbing part is that these slain drug suspects, armed with either a .38 caliber revolvers, .45 caliber pistols and/or fragmentation grenades, have the lamest aims.

Let’s consider the narrative that the armed drug suspects supposedly fired shots at the poseur-buyer cops they were dealing with but missed and were killed as the police returned fire since their lives were endangered.

We have seen how small a sachet of shabu is based on the post-operation photo documentation. It is so small you have to be at least a foot away to be able to hand it. To be able to shoot the poseur-buyer, one has to whip out their concealed weapon, aim, and shoot the undercover cop.

During these flurry of actions, the drug suspect and the undercover cop are standing only a foot away from each other. Can’t the poseur-buyer grapple from the drug suspect’s gun as the latter is whipping it out? How can a drug suspect shoot the poseur-buyer, again a foot away from them, when a human arm when it is aiming is at least three feet in length? Don’t our cops train in hand-to-hand combat?

It is almost the same series of movement when it is a grenade. The drug suspect has to get the grenade out of the pocket, pull the pin, and lob the grenade.

An M67 fragmentation grenade, for example, has a killing radius of five meters and a casualty-producing radius of 15 meters. Its fragments could spread to as far as 230 meters. With this in mind, shouldn’t the cop wrestle the drug suspect before he could take the grenade from his pocket?

Deadly force should be the cops’ last resort. I remember a raid in Sto. Niño, years back. Now that operation needed deadly force since the narcotics agents were fired upon from a distance.

These dead sad sacs must be the worst drug dealers in the illegal drugs trade. It is either that or our police need to revise their seemingly “pro-forma” post-anti-drug operations reports.