The brazen kidnapping and killing of a Korean businessman by policemen brings into serious question the integrity of our law enforcers. Jee Ick Joo, an executive of the Korean ship-building company Hanjin, was killed right inside the headquarters of the Philippine National Police in Camp Crame. This is a shocking, shameless mockery of the country’s justice system. The very people we expect to protect us are the ones committing heinous crimes.
Joo who thought he had found a second home in the Philippines, was abducted in Angeles, Pampanga. He was brought to the PNP headquarters and strangled while in custody. His body was brought to a Quezon City mortuary where it was immediately cremated and his ashes flushed down the toilet. To cover up their dastardly deed, the perpetrators reportedly erased the film footage of the CCTV camera that recorded Joo being brought into Camp Crame.
Who will police the police?
Buhay Party-List Rep. Lito Atienza is appalled at the breakdown of law and order when the ordinary citizen cannot trust the very authorities he expects to protect him from criminals. To reform law enforcement, the justice and the penal systems, Atienza is filing a House bill addressing these problems. He said the root of the problem started when the PNP and the Philippine Constabulary were integrated with the control and management of law enforcement left entirely to the PNP chief. Under the old set-up, town and city mayors also had supervision over the police and its head. Atienza’s House measure also seeks a deeper and stringent selection process in the recruitment of policemen. He said crooked cops can be traced to the lax requirement of police recruits. Policemen on the beat should be assigned to the community where they belong so they are more familiar with the people in the area, suggested Atienza.
But isn’t that giving the mayors too much power subject to their abuse? Such a set-up, said those opposed to the idea, would be a return to local officials acting like warlords in their areas.
“But this very fear of such abuse is happening now,” said Atienza a three-term mayor of Manila. He cited the gruesome fate of the Korean businessman at the hands of three policemen and their cohorts. He aired his concern that Operation Tokhang, the government’s no-holds barred campaign against drug traffickers, is being used by the police to commit kidnapping for ransom and other forms of criminal activity like extortion and indiscriminate killing under the guise of self-defense.
“The police act with impunity because they get the green light from the top to kill those involved in illegal drugs,” lamented Atienza.
Atienza is staunchly against the return of the death penalty which some congressmen are planning to include in the proposed amendments to the 1987 Constitution. That would only be giving the police more power to abuse their authority, he said, adding the ominous prospect of the death penalty would intimidate criminals to submit to the caprice and whim of policemen serving arrest warrants.
”There is no need for the death penalty,” said Atienza as he pointed out that “being confined to the abysmal living condition in our state prison is worse than death.” He cited congestion of detainees in their prison cells. He condemned the two-tier system in the treatment of detainees and questioned why affluent prisoners are given the VIP treatment while the poor ordinary detainees are subjected to sub-human conditions.
The state of the country’s penal system was the subject of a recent front-page story in the New York Times headlined “They are treating us like animals.” The Times ran the story together with a large photo of prisoners packed like sardines and sleeping on the cold cement floor. The photo was like a mural which painted the state of the country’s penal system.
The shocking case of the Korean business executive has drawn the ire of House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez who demanded the resignation of PNP chief Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa for not being able to control his men. Coming from an ally of President Rodrigo Duterte, the call of Alvarez for Dela Rosa’s resignation speaks volumes of how Jee’s case has outraged legislators from both sides of the political aisle.
South Korea’s foreign ministry also issued a statement released through its embassy in Manila denouncing the implication of PNP members and expressed concern for the safety of its nationals in the Philippines. We cannot blame South Korea, a major source of foreign investments, for being concerned. Koreans have also been flocking here to boost our tourism figures. But now Jee Ick Joo and the grim fate he suffered will probably be the poster child of why foreigners should not visit and invest in the Philippines.