Bungled drug busts

The way law enforcers fumble their way to a drug bust, it's inevitable that the charges often fail to stick. It's appalling to find out that 591 drug cases were dismissed by different courts around the country last year. A report prepared by the Drug Law Enforcement and Prevention Coordinating Center said most of the cases were dismissed due to lack of evidence, illegal arrests, legal lapses in the confiscation of evidence, and the failure of witnesses to show up for court trials. The report showed that in the first half of 1999, the Philippine National Police crime laboratory went through 14,200 possible drug cases, but only 76 percent got filed in court.

The problem was highlighted when suspected drug lord Alfredo Tiongco was cleared of drug trafficking charges last year. Composite teams from the police and armed forces ringed Tiongco's house. The troops killed a young girl in a car that happened to drive by during the operation, but Tiongco eluded arrest. Tiongco was finally caught months later, but the case was thrown out for insufficiency of evidence.

Do law enforcers care when the suspects they arrested and booked are acquitted? Apparently not. Other-wise, law enforcers would be more careful in conducting arrests, searches and seizures, and there would be fewer cases of anti-narcotics agents planting evidence. If law enforcers don't care if drug traffickers are eventually freed, why bother going after suspects? So the cops can have it on record that they are doing their job, that they have an increasing number of arrests and higher amount of drugs confiscated, which are used for evaluating individual and group performance.

Part of a law enforcer's job, however, is making sure the charges they file will stick. The PNP, apart from having members involved in drug trafficking, is also saddled with incompetent cops who bungle arrests and mishandle evidence. But these problems are not insurmountable. Law enforcement agencies must continue purging their ranks of those involved in drug trafficking and other criminal activities. All law enforcers must also be thoroughly trained on legal procedures in conducting arrests, searches and seizures of evidence. To get drug dealers behind bars, they must be prosecuted and convicted. This starts with a proper arrest and handling of evidence.