‘No more short cuts’

The new chief of the Philippine National Police, Nicolas Torre III, has a mission: to show that keeping the public safe is possible without taking lethal short cuts in law enforcement.

President Marcos has pursued this approach to criminality from Day One; it was among his earliest policy rifts with his now estranged UniTeam partner and ultimately the entire Duterte clan. 

BBM belongs to the Boomer generation. Or more accurately, the micro “Generation Jones” – people born between the early 1950s and the early 1960s, identified with the counterculture, the Pill and free love. People in his age group were into sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.

As the princeling during the Marcos dictatorship, Ferdinand Junior was dogged by rumors of being a dopehead. Whether or not the rumors are true, perhaps BBM understands the complexities of substance abuse better than the generation of his predecessor, and genuinely believes that drug addicts and small-scale pushers deserve a second chance. 

After three years, however, this approach has created perceptions that the drug problem is back with a vengeance, that peace and order is deteriorating and that BBM is too soft on criminals. 

Is this simply a narrative being pushed by Duterte diehard supporters? The Marcos administration may dismiss such perceptions as mere DDS black propaganda backed by trolls made in China. But people I know who live in low-income communities in Metro Manila are increasingly bemoaning that drunken and drug-addled troublemakers are in fact back in their neighborhoods, engaging in violence, vandalism, petty thievery, extortion and harassment of women.

Rodrigo Duterte hammered home the message that he was going after such troublemakers to keep the public safe.

The broken windows theory is controversial. But having grown up in the seamy neighborhoods of the city of Manila, I know there are people who appreciate seeing the government addressing minor signs of social disorder (such as windows broken by vandals) before these escalate into major crimes.

This approach partly underpinned the focus of Duterte’s Oplan Tokhang on penny-ante neighborhood drug pushers and addicts. But the approach is prone to abuse by state forces, which is exactly what happened in the case of Tokhang.

After all the serious abuses committed in Duterte’s war on drugs, however, we must ask why the take-no-prisoners approach to criminality continues to hold an appeal to a significant segment of our population.

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Facing The STAR’s online show “Truth on the Line” last week, Torre warned that people applaud the hardline approach to criminality, until one of their loved ones or friends, or they themselves become the targets of the bloody crackdown.  

Shortly after Rodrigo Duterte assumed the presidency, he sat down with The STAR staff for nearly four hours at Malacañang, during which he regaled us with his sense of humor and explained his iron-fist approach to criminality.

The criminal justice system is so weak and compromised, he told us, that pinning down drug dealers – whether penny-ante pushers or large-scale traffickers – can be almost impossible. The major traffickers in particular know enough not to get caught with their illegal merchandise in their possession, he noted. And drug dealing is so lucrative the traffickers can afford to keep dirty cops on their payroll who tip them off about police raids. The few drug dealers who actually get caught and prosecuted often buy their way to freedom, whether at Camp Crame or before the judicial courts.

Planting evidence to pin down such drug dealers may not be enough. Throughout his six years in power, Duterte repeatedly warned drug dealers and other lowlifes: “I will kill you.” We all know it wasn’t mere hyperbole or (to borrow a phrase from the UniTeam’s messy divorce) a “conditional threat.” 

Torre has publicly told the police force not to plant evidence, and to use lethal force only as a last resort, always mindful of their duty to keep the people safe. He has vowed “zero tolerance” for extrajudicial killings. 

He has moved to improve police cooperation with the Commission on Human Rights, describing the CHR as the PNP’s “boss” in protecting civil liberties. 

There are cops who scoff at this, pointing out that lawmen can’t play nice with drug traffickers, murderers, rapists. Torre has a year to prove them wrong.

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I asked him about perceptions that BBM is soft on crime. Torre’s reply: look who have been arrested and are now behind bars under BBM’s watch. 

Torre has made his mark not only as the first graduate of the PNP Academy to head the police force, but also for having carried out the arrest of Duterte and, before that, for smoking out the former president’s bosom buddy, pastor Apollo Quiboloy.

Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla, whose department oversees the PNP, described Torre as a “pit bull” who gets things done. Torre joked that he didn’t know if he should be flattered or insulted by the description.

He will be putting together solid data over the past decade, Torre said, to disprove that peace and order has deteriorated under BBM.

To make people feel safer, Torre is moving to increase police visibility through intensified patrols as well as a five-minute police response in highly urbanized areas. He wants cops to improve their marksmanship and to be physically fit to serve the public efficiently. 

Those who are glad that the days of Oplan Tokhang and Double Barrel are over are looking forward to seeing Torre make good on his avowed policy that human rights and law enforcement can go hand in hand.

For the DDS, there’s a special place in hell for Nicolas Torre III. So far, his response to this has boiled down to, bring it on.