Controversial PNP policies
Police chief Gen. Guillermo Eleazar addresses criticisms over the proposal to arm civilians to help fight crime.
"[President Duterte] and us at the PNP understand the dangers that our volunteers will face for standing up against criminal elements that include members of the (communist) CPP-NPA-NDF and the suggestion made was aimed at ensuring their own protection," Eleazar says in a statement.
He adds that the volunteers will have to be subject to rules and procedures should the policy be enacted.
Liberal Party Vice President for External Affairs Erin Tañada says the Philippine National Police should keep off campuses and instead focus on keeping the public safe and on solving the continuing mass murder of drug suspects.
“Having the police, intelligence agents, and even the military inside campuses will send a chilling effect on students and teachers, and will hamper their learning and teaching. Napakarami ng mga krimen sa lansangan, kabilang na patayan, at dito dapat itinutuon ng mga pulis ang atensyon nila (There are too many crimes on the streets, including the continuing mass murders of drug suspects, and this is where the focus of the police should be),” says Tañada in a statement.
Tañada, who was president of the National Union of Students of the Philippines in his younger days, is reacting to PNP’s plan to deploy more policemen in campuses to boost the campaign against insurgency and amid the controversy involving recruitment of students to rebel groups.
The police Community Mobilization Project will not be a revival of the "Alsa Masa" anti-communist vigilante group , the director of Police Regional Office 4A in Calabarzon, says.
According to state-run Philippine News Agency, Chief Superintendent Edward Carranza, regional director, said in a press conference that the CMP will not be an armed vigilante group.
"Non-violence will always prevail in Community Mobilization Project. Members of CMP will not be armed," he says in the report.
He says the CMP is meant to empower citizens "to help law enforcers in maintaining peace and order; however, empowerment does not mean arming them with firearms, but with knowledge and trainings necessary in promoting public safety."
The Human Rights Watch warns that the reported move by the PNP to organize Alsa Masa-like groups for grassroots intelligence gathering "will worsen the human rights calamity we are seeing in the Philippines at the moment."
"Tapping this network to gather more intelligence – often nothing more than gossip and raw, unverified information – for use in the murderous campaign by the Duterte administration against suspected drug users and suspected criminals will only mean more extrajudicial deaths," it says.
HRW explains that due process and the presumption of innocence are just two of the civil liberties that will be violated under this plan.
"This intelligence network, for all practical purposes, usurps the function of the courts to determine the culpability of a person accused of a crime and, worse, give the police justification to harm or kill suspects without due process of law. This is exactly what happened in parts of Mindanao during the dark days of the Alsa Masa."
Monitor this thread as we follow updates on controversies surrounding Philippine National Police policies.
- Latest
- Trending
