Bodycams, not blah-blah, can dispel ‘massacre’ tag

Video cameras on their chests and dashboards. Those can prove the official police version of the killing of nine supposed communist insurgents in separate, simultaneous house raids Sunday. Merely claiming that the nine had fired at the cops and so were shot dead won’t suffice. Their comrades cry that the fatalities were unarmed youth, environment and labor activists. Two were a married couple who left behind a nine-year-old son. Unedited recordings will end the he-says-she-says. The videos can even burnish the Philippine National Police image. They can show that cops abide by truth and rules. PNP Director General Debold Sinas must publicize the ultimate evidence.

Body- and dash-cams are now integral parts of police accessories, as basic as badges, batons, side arms, handcuffs, pen and notebooks. Reviewing the videos will show if operatives follow the Manual of Procedures. Rule 1 – Functions of a Police Officer – requires them to “serve and protect” and “observe human rights and respect the dignity of suspects.” From videos, superiors can collate best practices and correct lapses of their men.

Last Sunday’s PNP operations in Cavite, Batangas and Rizal provinces targeted “communist terrorist movements.” Arrest warrants were to be served and premises searched for illegal firearms and explosives. Rules 12 – Internal Security Operations, 13 – Arrest and 14 – Search and Seizure cover those. Aside from copies of the warrants, required paraphernalia are Miranda Rights card and Anti-Torture card that must be read. Plus, since 2017, the all-important video cameras.

“Body-cam sa katawan, dash-cam sa sasakyan,” Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto reiterated only two weeks ago. They are musts in police operations and patrols, he said in the aftermath of a botched entrapment in which Philippine Drug Enforcement agents and Quezon City undercover cops ended up shooting each other outside a mall. Each side lost two men and many more wounded in the hour-long gunfight. For neutrality, the National Bureau of Investigation stepped in. “It was again a bloody reminder of a missing but vital equipment in policing – video recording devices,” Recto sighed.

In 2017 Recto and then-senator JV Ejercito co-sponsored a P5.4-billion budget for new police equipment, including body-cams. But it took four years and five PNP chiefs to buy only 2,600 pieces last January. Failed biddings purportedly delayed the procurement. If 2,600 is the annual number of body-cams the PNP can buy, Recto said “it will take 100 years to provide every policeman with one. And about 20 years if the target is to buy 40,000, on the assumption that only one in every five officers would need to wear one at any given time.”

Cameras are relatively cheap, at a time when we are buying missiles, attack helicopters, destroyers and fighter jets, Recto added. “And if man can send a vehicle with a camera 200 million miles away to Mars, why can’t we equip our police patrol cars with dash-cams, which every car or food delivery bike seems to have these days? In this age of Facebook Live, that isn’t cutting-edge space technology.”

“Requiring police officers to wear body-cams during routine patrols and also for PDEA, NBI and military units during field operations will store evidence needed to prosecute criminals,” Recto explained. “Sabi nga nila, may resibo. Played in court, the footage is evidence hard to refute. It will also ensure that S-O-P is followed. And it cuts both ways. It protects citizens from abuse, and the police from unfounded charges of abuse.”

Presumably the PNP brass heeded him.

Last weekend’s slayings have dented the PNP’s credibility anew. Commissioner on Human Rights Gwen Pimentel-Gana likened them to the “brazen and brutal drug war killings.” The “nanlaban narrative” that the victims had violently fought back “should be determined by a competent court and not merely asserted without trial of facts,” she said. Church leaders doubted the police claim of legitimate self-defense. Calling it “bloody Sunday,” the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines said the deaths resulted from “intolerable impunity... We cannot allow our children to grow up thinking that life is not sacred.”

Even Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra admitted “disappointment.” Only days ago he had committed to the UN Human Rights Council better police operations, particularly against drug and terrorism suspects. “I was hoping our law enforcers would be more careful but these things continue to happen,” he said.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed horror: “We are appalled by the apparently arbitrary killing of nine activists... We are deeply worried that these latest killings indicate an escalation in violence, intimidation, harassment and Red-tagging of human rights defenders.”

The raids happened two days after President Rody Duterte told troops to “kill all communist rebels.” Vice President Leni Robredo linked that order to the “massacre.” The PNP denied any excessive use of force on civilians. Senator Ronald dela Rosa, Duterte’s first PNP chief, said his ex-boss was “merely hyperbolic.” But colleagues Panfilo Lacson and Richard Gordon countered that the commander-in-chief “can be misinterpreted.”

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