Relentless

After two days of televised hearings on the so-called “extrajudicial killings” marring the “war” against illegal drugs, one could only ask: What was this all about?

The hearings, obviously, will produce no new legislation. Gang wars, rubouts and vigilante killings are illegal as things stand. It will be redundant to declare them illegal all over again.

The hearings did not establish killing as police policy. No orders were found instructing police to shoot first and ask questions later.

If scalawags in the police force went out to liquidate their erstwhile “assets” under the shadow of a determined campaign against illegal drugs, it is the duty of the PNP to establish this and file the appropriate charges. That appears to have been done, at least within the capacity restraints of the Internal Affairs Service of the PNP.

If the drug syndicates engage each other in a bloody fight for control of territory, that will result in killings not directly attributable to the official campaign against the entire network of drug peddlers.

If a syndicate decides to terminate a low-level pusher who absconded money, wrap the poor man in packing tape and pronounce him the pusher that he is, the murder should not be attributed to the police campaign. Some of the tallies done by some media organizations, however, lump casualties in the gang wars with those killed in the police-led campaign.

Sure, there are innumerable cases of police misbehavior. The Pasay cops who killed suspects in their custody, the Antipolo “ninja cops” who picked up and liquidated a couple who sold the meth they recycled, these are all symptoms of bad eggs in the police organization.

The current campaign against the drug syndicates is of unprecedented magnitude. At the first instance, it reveals the scale of the drug problem that the preceding administration simply allowed to fester.

At the onset, President Duterte said that the drug menace has grown to such proportions it will reduce us into a narco-state in a few years. It is that specter that drives up the energy and the passion of those charged with fighting the menace.

The drug syndicates are not easy to deal with. They are armed. They have heaps of money to throw around, to buy influence with. They will not hesitate to use force to protect turf.

Several policemen and army troopers have been killed since this campaign began. Those complaining about the heavy-handedness of the police should also understand policemen put their lives on the line each day of this campaign. They work with the necessary disadvantage of being in uniform while the assassins of the syndicates move anonymously, shooting from speeding motorcycles.

True, our existing facilities are woefully inadequate to deal with the number of arrests this campaign is generating. Our jails are packed. Our rehab centers are few. Our courts are overloaded. Government does not have enough lawyers to write all the indictments for drug offenders.

But should the campaign against illegal drugs grind to a halt because of these limitations?

We will never be ready to cope with the fallout from a campaign as large and as determined as the one in progress. If we wait for all the jails and all the rehab centers to be built, the nation will die.

Likewise, if we wait for search warrants to be issued and grant the syndicate all the niceties of “due process,” nothing will come out of this campaign. This effort intends to shock and awe, to shake the trees so to speak to force out the bats. It relies on the syndicates panicking as much as on the diligence of our anti-drug police teams.

The menace has reached unbelievable proportions. Drug lords detained at the national penitentiary, it turns out, continue to control the trade. This is the reason why sending in the SAF became necessary.

If the syndicates operate out of jail, they must enjoy the cooperation not only of the jail guards but of much senior officials as well. This is the reason why President Duterte no less is focusing on mapping out the network of influence-peddling that produced this improbable situation.

According to the PDEA, as many as three million Filipinos are hooked on drugs. The severely addicted account for some of the most horrible murders that happened. Even if government does nothing, as it did in the preceding six years, there will be much blood in the streets, inflicted by the zombies with addled minds or the syndicates enforcing their collections.

PNP chief Bato de la Rosa put the matter so well before the senators. He declared he would be happy if the President orders them to let up on the anti-drug campaign. The police chief and his men are exhausted. The capacities of the police force are stretched to the limits.

But President Duterte is relentless. He understands more than most of us the scale of the scourge and its grave implications to our social development. He will not allow the momentum this campaign managed to generate to dissipate.

Never before have we seen street crimes drop so dramatically. Never before have we seen community leaders rally to support the police. The fact that Bato has achieved rock star status in a matter of weeks is testament to the success of this campaign.

This could be the moment we finally tip the balance in favor of order. The lapses and errors all seem minor given the scale of this effort.