Winds of change

Members of the Philippine National Police who are mindful of their career prospects should be following recent developments in Davao City.

In the previous administration, Rodrigo Duterte constantly reassured law enforcers that he’s got their back, that in case of legal problems, he would be the only one to go to prison for his brutal campaign against illegal drugs.

There were persistent rumors that the government at the time had even imposed a quota and put up a reward system for the number of suspects killed or arrested in the war on drugs. So far, no cop has come out to publicly confirm this; Duterte officials have denied it.

Under the new administration, 35 members of the Davao City police including their chief, Col. Ricardo Bad-ang, have been sacked following the killing of at least seven drug suspects.

The Philippine National Police has explained that the 35 are under preventive suspension, as recommended by the PNP’s regional internal affairs office, while the killings are being investigated.

The seven suspects were shot dead within days after Duterte’s son Sebastian, now Davao mayor, declared a renewed crackdown on prohibited drugs in the city. This was on March 22, when Bad-ang assumed the post of city police chief.

Mayor “Baste” had clarified that he did not order the city’s cops to kill drug personalities. What he declared, he stressed, was that he himself would do the killing. Spoken like his father’s son; daddy dearest must be beaming with pride.

But the “powers that be” (to borrow a favorite quote these days) were unimpressed, and aghast over this open defiance of the avowed shift in the approach to the illegal drug scourge.

Over in Quezon, eight police intelligence agents led by a captain were arrested for a drug raid apparently on the wrong house in Lucena before dawn last Friday. Lucena police chief Lt. Col. Reynaldo Reyes was also sacked for command responsibility.

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As human rights advocates point out, drug killings continue under President Marcos. His officials did say that such killings could still occur, and yes, suspects violently resisting arrest or nanlaban could elicit a lethal police response.

But the scale of the killings