Habit-forming

See what happens when you make something easy: killings have become institutionalized.

After President Duterte barred the Philippine National Police from the war on illegal drugs, the PNP raids stopped – but not the killings, now attributed mainly to vigilantes.

While police have been arresting barangay personnel and “volunteers” or auxiliary forces and presenting them as the vigilantes who are carrying out the executions, public suspicion continues to focus on cops themselves who may now be operating underground.

The suspicion is not unfair or farfetched, since cops have been arrested for abusing Oplan Tokhang and Double Barrel, in some cases with video footage catching them in the act.

Even the MO is the same: either the victims are gunned down by men on motorcycles, or else they are turned into “mummies” – police slang for suffocating someone to death in a plastic bag sealed with packing tape.

One has to enjoy killing to execute someone in this manner, watching as the victim writhes in pain and terror until he (or she; women are not spared) gasps his final breath.

If decent members of the PNP do not want to tarnish their organization with these vigilante executions, the only way to redemption is finding the murderers and solving the so-called deaths under investigation. These DUIs reek of death squads, for which this administration has already developed a reputation. It’s an undeserved bad rep, the administration insists, but sometimes with a naughty wink.

The new DUIs are occurring in the same places with the highest cases of drug executions in the days of Tokhang: parts of Caloocan and Manila, much of Quezon City and certain areas in Bulacan.

Despite the implosion of Tokhang, there are people who continue to support short cuts to law enforcement, mainly because of the weakness of the criminal justice system. The attitude is that if lowlifes want to kill each other, they should do it, and quickly. The same goes for cops on a mission of exterminating, in mufti, drug dealers and other threats to peace and order: go ahead and kill.

But Tokhang also showed the high risk of abuse, which has led to the killing of innocents and punishment overwhelmingly not commensurate to the crime.

If the government allows these DUIs to pile up with little effort to solve them, impunity will again reign, as it did when Dirty Rody unleashed the forces of Tokhang and Double Barrel mostly in impoverished communities.

With the new killing spree unrestrained, it’s likely that another major embarrassment will blow up soon in the face of the administration, such as the kidnapping and murder of South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo by members of the police unit specifically tasked to wage the brutal war on drugs.

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Human rights watchdogs count an average of eight to 10 drug deaths daily since the PNP was pulled out of the war on drugs.

Given the nature of the illegal drug trade, it’s probably true that many of the killings are perpetrated by non-cops, as part of gang rivalries, as retaliation for rats and swindlers… there are many reasons for psychopaths to murder each other.

But the psychos are likely to include cops. And auxiliary teams organized by cops – the so-called force multipliers – such as the “volunteer barangay peacekeepers” accredited by the Manila Police District, out to continue Dirty Rody’s vicious war.

The question is, who’s giving the orders? Also, how much does the PNP chief know?

Director General Ronald dela Rosa, who has a penchant for publicly weeping and wringing his hands in frustration over the organization that he heads, should tell his cops to do more to solve the DUIs. Clean cops should stand up for what is right and bring honor to their uniform.

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In solving crime, it always helps to have people file complaints or provide leads to honest cops. That execution of a teenage boy by members of a barangay volunteer peacekeeping force in Manila was solved because the victim’s mother dared to seek justice and identify the suspects, even if they operated in her neighborhood.

But in this bloody war, people are terrified to file complaints or even talk to cops or barangay officials, because they could end up complaining to the killers themselves.

“Bato” dela Rosa, if he’s not in on the latest vigilante killings, must set up a public complaints mechanism that will facilitate the provision of anonymous leads.

A Marcos-era legal assistance group, which fought human rights abuses during the dictatorship, is also being revived, with young lawyers reportedly offering their services for free to the indigent.

The lawyers may also want to include a grassroots campaign to inform people of their rights against illegal arrest, searches and seizures.

Pursuing a case against murderers is expensive and a tortuous process in this country. Relatives of many DUI victims have enough problems just trying to survive from day to day. Their best hope for justice is free legal assistance from concerned groups and a possible class suit against the state.

The government insists there are no extrajudicial killings and is expected to mount a strong legal defense against such a lawsuit.

More effective than denials, however, is solution of the DUIs, to prove that the perpetrators are truly not members of state security units or their force multipliers.

The state has a constitutional duty to protect life. Every murder must be investigated and the perpetrator brought to justice.

Killing, left unchecked, is like drug abuse; it can be habit-forming. And like the drug menace, this addiction can be tough to eradicate.