SENATOR Panfilo Lacson on Monday challenged Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa to form a special task force to investigate the daily summary killings in the country.
He said the task force should home in on the execution of alleged drug personalities or the death under investigation of suspects.
“Some who surrendered in Operation Tokhang were still killed. It doesn’t speak well of the peace and order efforts of PNP,” Lacson said.
“We want to see a more vigorous, more vigilant effort on the part of the PNP and NBI and the entire government, in addressing the vigilante killings because this is already alarming.
“If we talk of 6,000, that’s 4,000 in a matter of less than six months,” said Lacson referring to the killings perpetrated by vigilantes that accounted for two-thirds or 5,800 of the 6,000 casualties.
“One-third [of the cases] were legitimate police operations but even the legitimate police operations were sometimes questionable.
“Until we see a high solution efficiency when it comes to murder cases, then the suspicion or perception that this is being sanctioned by the government will not be lost.”
Lacson said he had talked to PNP officers about the problem when they were still investigating the extrajudicial killings in the justice committee.
He said when the police officers went to his office he told them to solve the killings to avoid suspicions they were involved.
When he sought the solution efficiency and solution rate in the death-under-investigation cases, he was presented with varying data.
“We intend to ask them that. Their statistics plus the rate of solution in the DUIs. It’s low, very low. And we don’t know the status. They said they have identified the status, some were at large, some were charged in court.”