"They are more vicious than the virus."
"They are more vicious than the virus."
Not even the scare of a new coronavirus strain can obliterate the indelible images of this policeman shooting to death his neighbors, a mother and child in Paniqui, Tarlac last week.
P/SMSgt Jonel Nuezca, now the poster boy of Philippine National Police (PNP) scalawags, knew he was being video-recorded as he shot the victims pointblank in the head for all the world to see.
The cold-blooded murders is somewhat historical in that it has trivialized the infamous 1968 photograph of the street assassination of a Vietcong fighter by the South Vietnamese police chief then.
The photograph taken by Eddie Adams of the Associated Press dominated the front page all newspapers and is said to have helped change the Americans’ support of the horrific Vietnam War.
In the case of Nuezca, the aggrieved family of Sonya and Frank Gregorio would be lucky to achieve justice, much less bring about change in the culture of impunity among policemen.
In a fit of anger, Nuezca did not realize the video of the killings would go viral on social media, making him a superstar. He caught Frank with an improvised bamboo canon for revelry.
The cop even looked empowered being video-recorded, and has indeed overshadowed the Ninja Cops, the Dirty Harry cop who shot dead ex-Army cpl. Winston Ragos, and the Pintakasi cops who gunned down four unarmed undercover soldiers in Jolo, Sulu.
Nuezca, an anti-drug operative who has evaded dismissal from service despite a string of criminal and administrative cases, is a glaring example of how corrupted the so-called PNP internal cleansing system is, and how it is legitimized only by press releases.
Two homicide cases involving Nuezca stemmed from his participation in buy-bust operations in 2016 and 2018 in which three drug suspects were killed in alleged “shootouts.”
He also had been involved in a robbery-extortion or “kotong” case filed by a Taguig tricycle driver in 2014, resulting in the policeman’s demotion from senior master sergeant to master sergeant. It did not take long for him to get promoted again.
He had been transferred from one assignment to another, sowing terror including those in Pateros, Paranaque City and Paniqui, Tarlac, his wife's home province.
According to my sources, this notorious scalawag cop also enjoys the backing and protection of a media-savvy PNP official and a narco-politician Godfather.
The National Police Commission (NAPOLCOM) and the PNP’s Internal Affairs Service (IAS) have been practically non-existent, as far as weeding out undesirables in what has grown into 120,000-strong national police organization.
Congress should look into NAPOLCOM’s operation which is not only a waste of public funds but also a hotbed of corruption, involving case-fixing for rogue cops.
Case-fixing and promotions for sale through the said agency have been going on for the past five administrations.
NAPOLCOM is chaired by the Chief, PNP and not one PNP director-general has successfully instilled discipline and inspired professionalism over the past administrations.
As we face the specter of the dreadful threat of another novel coronavirus strain, the last thing the Duterte administration needs are homicidal maniacs in PNP uniform shooting Filipinos dead like dogs on the streets.