‘Navotas cops wanted Jemboy framed for drugs’

MANILA, Philippines — The killing of Navotas teenager Jerhode “Jemboy” Baltazar bears the hallmarks of the previous administration’s brutal narcotics crackdown, after the Senate panel investigating the incident learned that the police had wanted to pin down the teenager for illegal drugs.

“Sonny Boy,” a minor, testified during the Senate public order committee inquiry yesterday about his friend’s killing over a mistaken identity.

Sonny Boy was with Baltazar cleaning a boat at the Navotas River on Aug. 2 when they were fired upon by six Navotas police officers pursuing a suspect in a shooting incident.

He pointed to Navotas substation commander and team leader Capt. Mark Joseph Carpio as the police officer who asked him to frame his friend for drugs.

Carpio, who was cited in contempt by the Senate for being evasive during the previous hearings, denied the allegation of the minor, who also accused the police of beating him up when they got his sworn statement.

Abuses

In a press conference after the hearing, opposition Sen. Risa Hontiveros said the attempted police frame-up on Baltazar traced its roots to the police abuses during the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte, now the subject of an International Criminal Court investigation.

She also described as “overkill” the deployment of at least 20 police officers against an unarmed teenager on the mistaken notion that he was a shooting suspect.

“This latest tragedy of Jemboy is a result of the previous bloody war on drugs,” Hontiveros said. “The sworn duty of the Philippine National Police is to serve and protect. But why is it in this case, it is to kill and oppress?”

Hontiveros likened Baltazar’s death to the killings of teenagers Kian delos Santos, Carl Angelo Arnaiz and Reynaldo “Kulot” de Guzman in August 2017. Four police officers were convicted for the teenagers’ killings, which had roused anger at police abuses of Duterte’s drug war.

Emotions also ran high during the Senate hearing after Baltazar’s uncle, Nicanor Guillermo, said the poor like him have no chance of getting justice.

Guillermo, a fisherman, recalled how the police left Baltazar for dead after the boy fell into the water, leaving him alone to retrieve the body of his nephew from the muddy riverbed.