2 Zambo ‘ninja’ cops shot dead

Officers recycling seized ‘shabu’ first to fall after reward dangled for each dead ‘ninja’
policeman

Philippine Daily Inquirer

20 Aug 2018
—STORY BY INQUIRER STAFF

PO3 Ronald Bernardo

ZAMBOANGA CITY— Police officers Ronald Bernardo and Maria Oliver Olaso
were killed in an alleged shootout with colleagues during a drug bust operation
at Barangay Ayala. The two had been known to recycle “shabu,” or crystal
meth, according to Chief Supt. Edwin de Ocampo. The killing came hours after
President Duterte announced a P5-million bounty for each “ninja” policeman
killed.
ZAMBOANGA CITY— Barely 24 hours after President Duterte offered a P5-
million reward for every dead rogue policeman, two police officers, tagged as drug pilferers, were
killed in a drug bust operation in the village of Ayala here. In Cagayan de Oro City, 16 police officers
were luckier as they were just removed from their posts for failure to perform up to par to Mr. Duterte’s
standards in his war on drugs. In this city, PO3 Ronald Bernardo and PO2 Maria Oliver Olaso, both of
station 9 of the city police, were killed during a raid by fellow policemen.

Recycle
“The two cops have been known to recycle ‘shabu’ (crystal meth),” said Chief Supt. Edwin de
Ocampo, deputy regional Philippine National Police director for administration. “After an operation,
they don’t declare the actual volume of seized drugs,” De Ocampo said. In a report, Senior Supt.
Romeo Caramat Jr., head of the PNP Counter Intelligence Task Force, said the officers were
cornered in a buy bust operation and shot at their colleagues. “Olaso and Bernardo fired upon (sic)
our operatives, resulting in the armed confrontation and the death of both subjects,” Caramat said in
the report. Recovered at the scene were several sachets of shabu and two 9-mm pistols believed to
be the two slain officers’ service firearms.

Sample
The killing of the two officers in Zamboanga City came hours after Mr. Duterte on Friday announced a
P5-million bounty for each dead ninja policeman, the term referring to policemen or officers who pilfer
seized drugs and sell these in the streets through couriers. The President made the announcement in
Davao City as he expressed exasperation over corruption cases involving government officials and
police. “You better shape up,” Mr. Duterte said, addressing himself to officials of government and
police. “I will rise and fall on the issue of corruption,” he said.

Dead preferred
He said he would give P5 million to anyone who could bring him a dead ninja policeman. “If you bring
him alive, I will give P10,000 and kick you,” Mr. Duterte said. The President said he would set aside
P50 million in intelligence funds for the war on corrupt and criminal policemen. In Cagayan de Oro,
the regional police announced the saking of 16 police chiefs in the five provinces of Caraga region
because of poor performance in the war on drugs.

Poor performers
Chief Supt. Noli A. Romana, police regional director, said the relief of the officers was based on the
recommendation by the police’s oversight committee on illegal drugs. He said the sacked officers
either had “none or low accom- plishment” in the antidrug campaign in their areas. “The cops failed to
meet the requirements presented by the oversight committee on their anti-illegal drug operation,” said
Romana. Senior Supt. Jimili L. Macaraeg, acting deputy regional director for operations, said those
sacked were the chiefs of police in the towns of Santiago, Las Nieves, Kitcharao and Magallanes in
Agusan del Norte; the towns of Taganaan, Bacuag and San Francisco of Surigao del Norte; the towns
of Cantilan, Marihatag, Cagwait and Madrid of Surigao del Sur and five chiefs of police in Dinagat
Islands. Romana warned other policemen to intensify the campaign against drugs and crimes or be
sacked, too. “All chiefs of police in our region are reminded to intensify their anti-criminality campaign,
especially against illegal drugs, or they will face the same fate,” he said.
If you bring him alive, I will give P10,000 and kick you Rodrigo Duterte President.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1022962/2-zambo-cops-in-drugs-killed-after-duterte-offered-p5-m-bounty
Congested jails are tinderboxes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
20 Aug 2018
—SPECIAL REPORT BY MATTHEW REYSIO-CRUZ AND
KRIXIA SUBINGSUBING

JUDICIAL PURGATORY Police crackdowns on drug

suspects and loiterers have led to innumerable
arrests and incendiary conditions in detention
facilities.

For Baste, being in the city jail is paradise compared to the police detention centers, which have
become tinderboxes with hundreds of men crammed in cells that can barely hold a dozen. The
unbearable congestion has led Baste and others to actually prefer potentially yearslong commitment
in jail to temporary detention.

(First of two parts)

Like many other inmates at Manila City Jail, Baste is a “balikbayan”—someone who has done time
before. The others are proud of the distinction, but the 32-year-old from the slums of Santa Mesa
lacks the grit associated with recidivists. It’s because in his two arrests—the first in December 2017
and then in April this year—he says he was plucked off the street by plainclothes policemen and
accused of “shabu” (crystal meth) possession. Both times he was clean, he swears. But both times he
was charged with drug possession. President Duterte had ordered the intensification of the war on
drugs, later expanded to cover drinking in public, going around shirtless, and—like Baste on his
second arrest— simply being in the street at night. But for Baste, being in the city jail is paradise
compared to the police detention centers where arrested suspects are held pending commitment
orders from the courts.

Tinderboxes
These lockups have become tinderboxes, with hundreds of men crammed in cells that can barely hold
a dozen. The unbearable congestion has led Baste and others like him to actually prefer potentially
yearslong commitment in jail over temporary detention, where the men are transformed from humans
to masses of tattooed flesh that eat, sleep and defecate in the same space. At the Santa Cruz Police
Station where Baste was temporarily held, he slept for weeks sitting upright, hands around his knees,
while 20 other inmates took turns lying down in a cell built for eight. A riot could break out if he so
much as jostled a sleeping inmate. With no one to bring him food, he sometimes had to make do with
bread saved from the others’ leftovers, which he had to share with those who had nothing to eat. The
air was thick with body heat and the acrid smell of sweat. In the streets, Baste was a scavenger who
subsisted on scraps. But his stay at the Santa Cruz Police Station was worse, he says.
It was President Duterte “who changed my life,” he says. “If not for him, I wouldn’t have had to go
through that.”

As high as 612 percent

The twin crackdowns by the Philippine National Police on drug suspects and violators of city
ordinances this year swelled the number of arrests, straining scant resources in both police cells and
jails and subjecting detainees to inhumane conditions. In the Bureau of Jail Man- agement and
Penology (BJMP) jails alone, congestion rates go as high as 612 percent nationwide. In Metro Manila,
those with the highest number of inmates are the Manila and Quezon City jails, which hold around
5,000 and 3,600 inmates—or congestion rates of 900 and 450 percent—respectively. Most of the
inmates are charged with drug possession or sale, or both—but a number claim being framed by
police to rack up the PNP’s arrest numbers. But while congestion in BJMP jails is indeed severe, the
figures don’t quite reflect the inmates’ relative freedom of movement. At Manila City Jail, the yellow-
clad inmates are allowed free rein on the 3.6-hectare lot, where they can play basketball and interact
with others. The inmates of Quezon City Jail don’t get as much room, but at daytime they can leave
their cells and stretch their legs in the open court on the ground floor. Each is assured meals—often
peasant food like meatless arroz caldo (porridge)—thrice daily despite the BJMP’s meager budget of
P60 per inmate per day, according to the bureau’s spokesperson, Senior Insp. Xavier Solda. The
overcrowding only becomes apparent at night, when the inmates have to return to their brigades.
It’s a tangle of bodies on the cold concrete, either in the cells or outside in the open air, as each fights
for every inch of space to sleep.
Hole in the ground
With the war on drugs on hyperdrive, police are racking up more arrests faster than the courts can
issue orders for the suspects’ transfer to BJMP jails, Solda said. The result? Incendiary conditions that
make this judicial purgatory worse than jail for the inmates. Such was the case of Gil, 41, whowas
arrested in July by officers from the Barbosa precinct (also covered by the Santa Cruz station) as he
was getting off work at an e-bingo boutique on Recto Avenue. A first-timer with no visitors, Gil landed
at the bottom of the pecking order when he was transferred to Santa Cruz. For days he ate and slept
in the “restroom,” which essentially was a small corner of the cell separated by a low concrete wall.
A hole in the ground made for a toilet, and a PVC hose hanging from the ceiling made for a shower.
Sleeping meant lying down on the concrete floor, wet with water seeping from the restroom. In time
Gil learned to tie his clothes to the cell bars to make a hammock—a reprieve from the sea of flesh
below. “I pity myself often,” he says, voice cracking with emotion. “Things are just so bad.”

Where it went wrong

The problem is that PNP detention centers are meant to be temporary holding places only. Thus,
each police precinct or station has limited funds, sometimes none, for longer-term needs such as
medicines. Supt. Erwin Margarejo, for- mer spokesperson for the Manila police, said budgets for PNP
detention centers were often based on the ideal capacity of those places, not on the actual number of
inmates. The budget for daily food, for example, is often around P30 per inmate.
This means that detainees are largely dependent on visitors to provide them with resources.

Plea bargaining
The BJMP has put in place certain measures to ease congestion, Solda said. One is plea bargaining,
a recent Supreme Court framework that would allow small-time drug suspects to cut their jail time and
undergo rehab instead. Another is the “good conduct, time allowance” policy, a behavioral incentive to
cut jail time if the inmate pursues further studies, or attends technical-vocational or values-
development programs. These measures have led to the release of 59,625 inmates nationwide in the
last 10 months, Solda said. More important, he said, these weren’t mere measures to help decongest
the jails; these allowed inmates to be reintegrated into society and prevented them from being
recidivists. “Balikbayan” Baste says he has made his decision: “They always tell us to just admit to the
crime, to which we always say, ‘But why would we do that?’ But many of us take the plea bargaining
just to get out.”

http://www.pressreader.com/philippines/philippine-daily-inquirer/textview
Gordon: ‘Cops who jailed lawyers could face
charges’
By: DJ Yap - Reporter / @deejayapINQ
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 06:10 AM August 20, 2018

Sen. Richard Gordon (File photo by LYN RILLON /

Philippine Daily Inquirer)
The policemen who arrested and detained three lawyers
for taking photos and videos during a drug raid at a Makati
bar could face arbitrary detention charges, Sen. Richard
Gordon said on Sunday.

Gordon, chair of the Senate blue ribbon committee, said Makati police authorities were at fault in
arresting and detaining the three lawyers who were just performing their jobs while the policemen
were searching the bar for party drugs. “What the police did was wrong. Those are lawyers, officers of
the court. It’s the job of lawyers to protect [the interest] of their client,” Gordon told dzBB radio. The
three were identified as Lenie Rocel Rocha, 25; Jan Vincent Sambrano, 32; and Romulo Bernardo
Alarkon, 33, all working for the Desierto and Desierto law firm, which represents the owners of Time in
Manila bar on Makati Avenue. The lawyers were arrested on Aug. 16 and detained for more than 24
hours after the policemen accused them of obstruction of justice after they “entered the premises of
the bar, took several pictures and videos of the scene, and intimidated the members of the searching
team without proper and prior coordination.”

Trumped-up charges
They were released on Friday night, though the police pressed charges against them, including
“constructive possession” of illegal drugs. “That was not obstruction of justice,” Gordon said. “It’s only
obstruction if you are blocking the evidence.” He said it seemed that the police officers were only
trying to justify their actions by filing trumped-up charges against the lawyers. “They had already
committed because if it was just obstruction, they should have released [the lawyers] within 18 hours,”
Gordon said. “They could be charged with arbitrary detention,” the senator said, making a distinction
between illegal detention and arbitrary detention, which is committed by public officers or employees.

‘Frightening’
Under the Revised Penal Code, if the detention has not exceeded three days, the violator may face
up to six months in prison. “The procedures are clear. The [Philippine National Police] should be
slammed for this because it’s wrong and what they’re doing is frightening,” Gordon said.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1022977/gordon-cops-who-jailed-lawyers-could-face-charges