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Friday, March 29, 2024

Shoddy police work

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IN just a matter of days, Philippine National Police chief Ronald dela Rosa has turned from blaming prosecutors to admitting that his own people filed a weak case that led to the dismissal of charges against self-confessed drug dealer Kerwin Espinosa.

“You really pulled one over us, but Kerwin, you may have fooled us now, but you cannot fool us all the time,” Dela Rosa said in a mix of Filipino and English. “Mark my word[s], sometimes, we will be the one to [pull] one [over] you.”

The admission was a departure from the blame he heaped on the panel of prosecutors days earlier, for failing to “diligently” consider the public interest before dismissing the drug cases against Espinosa, his alleged supplier, Cebu businessman Peter Lim, and 20 other suspects.

At the time, Dela Rosa said the prosecutors who reviewed the case should have alerted the PNP about any weaknesses in their case because of their legal implications. “If you have conscience you should have told us that the case is weak,” Dela Rosa said.

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But his remarks three days later revealed just how poorly the police did in filing their complaint.

In defense of his officers, Dela Rosa said Espinosa did not cooperate with the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group when he was asked to “reduce into writing” his confession during a Senate hearing where he admitted to transacting illegal drugs, with earnings reaching P40 million to P50 million yearly.

But why would a suspect—in this case, Espinosa—cooperate with police efforts that would land him in jail? The expectation that he would seems naive, at best, and lazy at worst.

Because Espinosa did not cooperate, Dela Rosa said, the police could only attach newspaper clippings of his Senate testimony, which they thought would be sufficient to support their case.

But newspaper clippings are third-party accounts that carry little or no weight in a court of law. Would it really have been so difficult for the police to find the transcript of Espinosa’s testimony before the Senate in November 2016, when the case was filed almost a year later?

It is easy to blame the panel of prosecutors for dismissing the case against Espinosa, Lim and the other suspects in their case. But the root of this debacle—which is what it is in the context of this administration’s war on drugs—is shoddy police work, plain and simple.

Shouldn’t heads finally roll? Or do we merely throw back our hands and adopt the police chief’s philosophy that stupid is better than ill-intentioned?

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