Let’s call a spade a godforsaken undertaker’s shovel. The mayor was killed by the police even if he was already in jail, under very suspicious circumstances that do nothing to improve the image of law enforcers—or, on the surface, of the Duterte administration itself.
What seems clear is that the killing of Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. was a police rubout. But what shouldn’t be concluded from that is that the authorities—as opposed to the corrupted members of the police force, some local officials and, yes, even a few members of the media—wanted Espinosa dead.
Espinosa was killed extra-judicially, despite the fact that he was already in the custody of a government agency that was supposed to ensure that the mayor went through the judicial process. In its strictest definition, after all, the term “extrajudicial killing” means that the death was perpetrated outside of the normal process by agents of the government, regardless of whether the agents’ superiors have made such killings actual policy.
However, EJK in these parts has already become a political shibboleth by specific groups, immediately attributed to the highest officials of government led by President Rodrigo Duterte, who has ordered a much-publicized war against illegal drug syndicates. Making that leap—especially in the case of Espinosa—is not easy, in the light of several very crucial factors.
As far as Espinosa is concerned, the earlier charge against the government was that it was treating the mayor with kid gloves. He was even taken into the personal custody of PNP chief Ronald dela Rosa, who drew flak for putting Espinosa up in his official residence, the White House in Camp Crame.
If Espinosa had not been charged and ordered detained by the court in the sub-provincial jail in Baybay, Leyte, it’s perfectly possible that he would have remained in Dela Rosa’s custody. But the transfer was effected, according to the process; so far, so good.
But in the wee hours of last Saturday, a 15-man contingent from the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group burst into the jail, ostensibly to serve a warrant on an already-detained Espinosa. It gets worse: Espinosa supposedly drew a gun that he kept in his cell (along with some convenient crystal meth) and died in an unbelievable gun battle.
To top it all off, the hard drive containing CCTV footage of Espinosa’s cell, among other areas of the jail, went missing. And the police are sticking to their story, regardless of how incredible it has become.
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In addition, the Duterte administration has next to nothing to gain by killing Espinosa. According to Senator Panfilo Lacson, the mayor was important because he apparently could verify the names of protectors of the drug ring operated by Espinosa’s son Kerwin, the Leyte-based alleged drug lord whose “franchise area” stretched from Eastern Visayas all the way to a sizable portion of Mindanao.
The people who stood to benefit from the killing of Espinosa were those who were in the lists held both by the slain mayor and Kerwin. The elder Espinosa drew up a list in the affidavit he made before he was killed, while Kerwin’s was contained in a “blue book” that was unearthed by the authorities during a raid at the family compound and which led to the filing of charges against him.
The Espinosa lists make a compelling case for killing the mayor, whose affidavit has become practically worthless now that the person who gave it can no longer attest to its veracity. And if Kerwin, now in detention after he was arrested in Abu Dhabi, is ever brought home to Manila, those who killed his father have now made sure that the appropriate message has been sent to him, as well.
This much can be concluded: Some of the usual suspects who have been so quick to blame Duterte for Espinosa’s killing are quite prominently named in the lists of father and son.
In the end, as anyone who has watched the popular TV series “Narcos” knows, the reason why the illegal drug trade is so violent is that the people in the trade think nothing to taking the lives of their own colleagues, to ensure that the trail of evidence never leads to them. And if it takes using the police to ensure that the dead men don’t tell the right, incriminating tales, they’ll do that, as well.
All of which is really to say that the policemen involved in the killing of Espinosa need to be thoroughly investigated, because right now, it looks like they are working not as agents of the government but in the employ of its sworn enemies. These cops have already failed the smell test of regularity—they should now also be examined as to whose bidding they were really doing.
The policemen who killed Espinosa should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, as anyone who engages in extrajudicial killing should. They should somehow be made to suffer more, if it is proven that they were acting on the behest of those who would allow the local narco-kings to carry on as before.
