Drilon to Aguirre: You are protecting cops involved in Kian's killing

MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Franklin Drilon on Thursday told Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II that he was “not impartial” in his handling of the investigation into the death of a high school student in Caloocan City and suggested that the DOJ cede control of the probe to the Office of the Ombudsman.

Drilon said that Aguirre’s statements criticizing groups and individuals for expressing outrage over the death of Kian Loyd Delos Santos while saying they did not show the same in other cases of killings showed that he was biased.

“Dito po sa mga pangyayari, an ordinary mind could readily conclude that in the totality of your statement, you are not impartial anymore insofar as the investigation is concerned,” Drilon, the minority leader in the Senate, said in a hearing by the committee on public order and illegal drugs into the killing of delos Santos last week.

Drilon, a former Justice secretary himself, said that Aguirre is trying to protect cops accused of slaying the teenager during a drug operation in the area.

“Ang bias ninyo ay so obvious. Yung bias to protect the policemen is so obvious,” he said, adding that Aguirre was not even trying to show neutrality in the issue.

Aguirre on Wednesday described the death of delos Santos as “blown out of proportion” and “isolated,” leading to strong reactions from members of the House attending a budget hearing for the Justice department.

'Handing case over to Ombudsman will put DOJ in bad light'

The Justice chief doubled down on these comments on Thursday at the Senate hearing into the incident.

This led Drilon to ask Aguirre if he was willing to allow the ombudsman to take over the case.

Aguirre answered: “I will not because that will put us in bad light.”

Such a decision would make the DOJ appear incapable of impartially probing the case, the Justice chief said.

He added that it was not for him to make that decision.

“It’s not a question of me agreeing. Is it called by the law that it will be the ombudsman that will investigate this killing? It’s not my desire,” he said.

The Office of the Ombudsman has a deputy ombudsman for military and other law enforcement offices.

The death of delos Santos has sparked widespread public outrage not seen since President Rodrigo Duterte launched his brutal and oftentimes bloody campaign against illegal drugs in July last year.

Duterte says Kian case 'not performance of duty'

Before the incident, Duterte vowed to protect cops and shield them from criminal prosecution. He has also ordered the reinstatement of cops involved in the killing of former Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa in his detention facility.

On Wednesday, he described the raid that led to the death of the boy as “bad” and not a real police operation.

The chief executive said that he had never ordered cops to gun down a suspect already on his knees begging for his life.

This was in contrast to earlier statements in which he seemed to suggest planting evidence and making drug users to put up a fight to justify their execution.

Senators, who last year denied the existence of extrajudicial killings in the country in a committee report, also slammed the police because of the death of delos Santos.

During the hearing, Senior Superintendent Chito Bersaluna, the sacked chief of Caloocan City, said that they validated the intelligence on the involvement of delos Santos only through social media posts after he was killed.

PO1 Jerwin Cruz, one of the three cops accused of killing the teenager, said that the man being dragged on the village’s CCTV video was not delos Santos. It was their asset, he said.

This contradicted the admission of the two of the cops that the boy on the footage was indeed delos Santos.