PNP: social media improper
venue to gripe on drug ops
If people have complaints on how anti-drug operations are conducted, the police have Camp Dagohoy-based Internal Affairs Service unit while the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) has its own unit based in Cebu.
At a radio forum commemorating drug awareness week, authorities recognized that people, especially the families of concerned drug personalities focused in the operation, have also rights that need to be heard, according to Bohol Police Provincial Office's (BPPO) Community Relations Officer SPO4 Quinciano Lopena and PDEA agent and provincial head Ferdinand Kintanar.
"But resorting to social media to air grievances may not help much, and may in fact demoralize the police who are performing the task," said Lopena at the Kapihan sa PIA (Philippine Information Agency).
In the same vein, Senior Supt. Felipe Rivera Natividad, Bohol police director, called on the public to cooperate with the police in their campaign against illegal drugs, saying that a successful anti-drug operation will after all benefit the entire community.
In an interview over station dyTR's "Ang Lungsod nga Nasayod" program aired every Saturday and hosted by Mike Ligalig, Col. Natividad assured that Bohol police operatives have been instructed to conduct police procedures in a fair manner as part of the PNP's procedural justice system.
Natividad noted the Boholano community can put their trust and confidence that police operations are all legitimate and in accordance with applicable laws.
Meanwhile, other law enforcement agencies like the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) have been mandated to render support in Pres. Rodrigo Duterte's war against drugs.
The PNP and PDEA IAS units are the ombudsman for the police and the narcotics agents and are manned by competent investigators, both officers assured too.
Pres. Duterte has already aired his support for the law enforcement agencies tasked to implement anti-narcotics operations and declared in no uncertain terms, his order to eradicate the problem in the next six months since he assumed office.
As this went, claims of extrajudicial killings reached the media, but in Bohol, police officials have assured that their job does not include killing criminals.
"Our job is to serve and protect," said Police Superintendent Nicomedes Olaivar during a police forum.
About 48 drug personalities from drug lords, to pushers and users have been killed since July, but Camp Dagohoy insists only 22 were killed in legitimate police operations.
Those killed had yielded guns and decided to evade capture by fighting it out with the police, Olaivar said.
The police have also the right to protect themselves at all times, according to SPO4 Lopena at the Kapihan sa PIA.
Nevertheless, possibly carried away by the surge of extra-judicial complaints resultant of the senate investigations as triggered by Senator Laila de Lima and the Commission on Human Rights, authorities see complainants starting to shift the war to the social media.
Unless they have other motives, the move to file formal complaints against law enforcement agencies is the most productive way to exact an investigation, Lopena clarified. (RAC/PIA)
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